


The Heels of Heroes

by vermillion_morning



Category: Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man/Deadpool - Joe Kelly (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Dubious Morality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, M/M, Meta, Mild Smut, Moral Ambiguity, Past Rape/Non-con, Period-Typical Homophobia, Peter Needs a Hug, Peter is 26, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Tension, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Wade Wilson Needs A Hug, Wade is 30
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2019-08-26 12:50:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16681936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vermillion_morning/pseuds/vermillion_morning
Summary: The year is 1965. The place is New York City. Peter Parker is a photographer, journalist and comic creator for the Daily Bugle. He wants to save the world from itself, he just doesn’t know how. Times are volatile with the Vietnam War in full swing and man shooting for the moon. In the space of a night, his life devolves into chaos when Wade Wilson comes crashing through his front door with a handful of mystery assailants in tow.Or a no-powers AU where Peter Parker is a journalist fighting for peace and writing Spider-man comics. While Wade Wilson is an ex-special forces mercenary who doesn’t know the definition of morality. They have a lot to learn from each other.





	1. The Moon Man’s Assailants

 

> **_‘I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.’_ **
> 
> **_-Anne Frank_ **
> 
> **_‘I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.’_ **
> 
> **_-_ Mary Shelley**

The year is 1965 and in a small New York apartment, a man lies on the floor, gazing out his window, through Chinatown apartments and upwards to the sky. In his mind’s eye, there is no light pollution, only the moon, the stars and the cosmos. He feels infinitesimal.

Several years prior in a scene plucked from his childhood daydreams the president of the United States had promised man would walk on the moon by the end of the decade. The world felt vast, as the world was no longer the limit. The man, Peter Parker had spent the better part of the afternoon interviewing and photographing a John Jameson for the front page of the Daily Bugle.

Peter Parker wasn't a ‘front-page’ kind of guy. More often than not he found himself writing fluff pieces or out in the field, photographing peace rallies regarding the Vietnam War and racial inequality. In recent months, he had even scored a small space wedged between the weather report and retail advertisements for his passion project comic strip.

He had only scored the front page because it was a last-minute story and everyone else had been too busy on such short notice. Ned Leeds was working on a story regarding a baseball scandal down in Brooklyn. Robbie Robertson was editing a tell-all piece about the spike in Harlem hate crimes. The only other person not working on a story was Peter’s co-worker Eddie Brock. He would have taken up the piece if not for the parasitic organism he had acquired on a remote journalistic inquiry into deforestation of the Amazon.  

“Don’t screw me over Parker. Make sure the interview is a good one,” His boss, and father of the aforementioned John Jameson had warned.

John Jameson was one of the small handfuls of men who had left the earth’s atmosphere. Peter Parker was in love with the science of it all, the leaps and bounds it had taken within recent years. His mind was swimming with the idea of new possibilities. John had been less enthused but had given him enough material to extrapolate into a cohesive column. As long as Peter called him a ‘hero’ at least twice in the piece he was sure J. Jonah Jameson wouldn’t complain- at least no more than usual.

The bathroom of Peter’s apartment had spent the afternoon functioning as a dark room.  It was the only other room to his small New York apartment beside the main room which functioned as a living, dining, kitchen and bedroom. New York life had made him embrace the new-found trend of minimalism. Though, he had still scattered his walls with images and illustrations of the stars and his favourite comic-book heroes.

He had no energy left after scrubbing a spray of ammonium thiosulfate from the grit between his bathroom tiles and had opted to sleep on the floor of his apartment opposed to pulling out the sofa bed. He lived in the type of neighbourhood where no one questioned the reek of acidic chemicals. He couldn’t work out if this was a blessing or a curse.

Now, he was trying to sleep but his mind was stuck on the moon. The possibilities for what they would find on their closest celestial neighbour was impossible to imagine. Even attempting to try made Peter’s head hurt.

He closed his eyes, trying again to sleep. New York ambience consisted of car horns, muffled conversations from the rooms beside, above and beneath him, not to mention the rhythmic squeal of the box spring mattress two doors down belonging to Mr and Mrs García. Peter had infrequently babysat their four-year-old son. He suddenly contemplated filling his ear cavities with ammonium thiosulfate.

In the hallway, a man was singing ‘America’ from West Side Story, until he wasn’t. The soft singing seemed to cut off abruptly. There was the shuffling of two sets of feet. The slamming of what Peter had first assumed was a door. Seconds later he realised it was the sound of a body slamming into a door, his door to be more precise. He reached over for his glasses placing them on and squinting into the semi-darkness. He was still half dressed in his daywear which consisted of a too large grey sweater tucked into high rise pants.

The smart option would be to turn a blind eye and let whatever was happening in the corridor continue to happen but attitudes like that may have been what got his uncle Ben, a father figure to Peter, killed.

Peter scooped up a tripod lying askew against his kitchen counter and flung open the door. Two men were in the hallway. One man laid unconscious on the floor, the other mostly unscathed save for his bleeding knuckles. The conscious man wore a too large trench coat, scarf and hat hiding all but his face and hands which were both badly maimed in some accident far worse than whatever had occurred in the hallway. His skin was uneven terrain, the hollows of which reminded Peter of the surface of the moon. They looked half like burn scars but something was off. Peter knew chemical burns when he saw them.  

“Despite what it may have sounded like, I wasn’t actually knocking on your door.” The man’s voice was a mixture of sharp edges and soft placation. Peter raised his tripod placing more space between the two.

“Woah there doe eyes. I’m the good guy. Promise.”

“You don’t look like it,” Peter replied sceptically, still never lowering his makeshift weapon.

“You look like Marlon Brando and James Dean had a nerdy baby so you’re not really one to talk.” Peter cracks the slightest of smiles, weapon lowering ever so slightly.

“That’s scientifically impossible.” The man looked at Peter as if he had sprouted a third head.

“What?” Peter pressed, the tripod trembling slightly in his hand.  

The man, bloody-knuckled and still half crumpled over, wildly gesticulates to his face.

“I was expecting you to compare me to something… less favourable. You know? I’m the human equivalent of a raisin in a world full of grapes. No one fucking likes raisins.” It hadn’t even crossed Peter’s mind.

“I like raisins,” The other man scoffed.

“It was low hanging fruit,” Peter tacked on simply.

The man straightened, placing his hand on the tripod and lowering it from his face. Peter chose to let him, though was unsure if it was a good idea. Criminals didn’t stand around and chat, did they? He could suddenly hear a mumble of voices rise from the stairwell.

“I see what you did there. Low hanging fruit… because we were talking about grapes. Explaining the joke always makes it less funny though, so I win the pun-off. Now, you really should go back inside. Nothing to see here. Go jack-off to the T.V or whatever kids do these days.”

Peter’s eyes trailed down to the man, still unconscious on the floor. The scarred man caught his face between his hands surprising Peter into dropping the tripod. He watched it fall to the floor and onto the unconscious man adding insult to injury.

“Ten points for that shot. If you hit him in the face, or the dick I would have given you twenty,” The man laughed before his face morphed into something more serious.

Peter wasn’t sure whether to laugh. He still didn’t know who the man on the floor was and why the other insisted he was the ‘good’ guy. The scarred man forced Peter to look away from the body and to him. Irrelevant as it may be, his eyes were very blue.

“Look, kid. Go back inside. Please?”

As a twenty-six-year-old man, ‘kid’ stung. The voices in the stairwell came ever closer, three men now appearing at the end of the hallway. Peter didn’t budge. He had no clue what was going on.

“Not until you tell me why the hell you slammed some guys head into my door,” Peter’s voice rose an octave as he spoke.

Peter pulled back from the other man’s grasp, stepping back into the doorway of his apartment.

“Go back inside now. No pleases.” The man made sure each word came out defined, low and sharp through gritted teeth.

“Tell me what’s going on. No pleases,” Peter shot back, watching the man roll his eyes and groan.

“He’s meant to be here,” One of the stairwell men called before locking eyes with Peter and the stranger.

“Fuck.”

The stranger had mumbled under his breath. He pushed Peter back into his apartment, following with the unconscious man and tripod in tow. He shut the door and locked the deadbolt behind him. 

“Shit, shit, shit.” He whispered like a mantra, pacing two steps either way of the entry.

“Maybe we could. Fuck no. That’ll never work. But now they’ve- shit. We are so fucked.”

The man seemed to be keeping up a conversation with himself. Peter almost felt rude to interrupt but there was no way he was going to be dragged into this.

“What’s going on? Who the hell are they and-” Peter’s words died in his mouth, replaced by the thunderous wrapping of knuckles against his door. A single warning shot of gunfire shook the door on its hinges, leaving a gaping wound the size of a quarter in the plywood.

“Wade, come out now and tell us what you’ve done with the files or we’ll have to result to less friendly measures.”

“This is friendly?” Peter hissed at Wade through gritted teeth.

The man nodded as though this was the most obvious fact in the world. Gunfire means friendly- great. Peter should have stayed inside. He should have fallen asleep instead of thinking about the moon, though doubted anyone could sleep through a gunshot. Through paper-thin walls, he realised that the muffled conversations from the rooms beside, below and above him had stopped, as did the squeaking of the box spring mattress two doors down.

The aforementioned ‘Wade’ looked around, assessing the room a mania sparking behind his eyes as he noticed the terrace of Peter’s apartment. He flung open the sliding glass door and picked Peter up. The other man was a head taller and far stockier so he did this with ease despite Peter kicking and wriggling in an attempt to free himself.

“Climb down. Take the back alleys to somewhere safe and crowded. I’m not sure if those guys noticed you, but if they did they might come after you. I’ve still got some stuff to do but it’s not safe for you to be hanging around.”

Wade picked up a pair of Peter’s formal shoes from the terrace, the only ones close to the two men. The man rolled his eyes at the odd look Peter gave him.

“Have you tried to run barefoot? I know it’s New York and no one gives a fuck but if you have to run fast shoes are a good idea.”

“These are dress shoes,” Peter scoffed indignantly still trying to wriggle from the man’s grip.

“The word you are looking for is heels and they definitely aren’t those.”

He shut the screen door behind the two of them and let his grip on Peter loosen as he handed over the shoes.

“Just tell me who’s after you,” Peter hissed through gritted teeth batting away the shoes.

“I don’t know, kid. The government probably, maybe the mob. Possibly both. I’m a busy guy. I get around,” He spoke in a flippant manner as he tugged Peter into a sitting position.

Wade then managed to pull Peter’s feet into his lap, shoving the shoes on him despite his protests. Peter didn’t know why the other man didn’t just leave.

“You said it was dangerous to hang around, what about everyone else in the building? And stop calling me kid.”

“Then stop acting like one,” He shot back sharply, giving a rough tug at the shoes’ laces and standing up.

“They should be okay, mostly. There might be some collateral damage but what’re you gonna do?”

Peter shook himself from the other man’s grip, now given room to move he retreated backwards, opening the sliding door and returning to the flat where the unconscious man was beginning to stir.

“I’m not going to leave and let people get hurt. I’ll pull the fire alarm or something. Get everyone out. You can go. You can just- do whatever the hell you need to do.”

Another blast of gunfire rattled through the apartment causing all the hairs on Peter’s arms to stand upright. He was a martyr and an idiot but he wasn’t just going to stand around and let innocent people get hurt. It didn't feel right.

“Do you hear that? That’s the sound of gunshots. Stop playing hero super geek,” Wade called, still out on the terrace.

Peter ignored him, picking up the tripod and storming to the front door. Catching the men off guard he managed to knock one off his feet as the door swung outwards into him. He landed one hit to the back of another man’s knees, sending him buckling to the ground while the third landed a rough punch right to Peter’s jaw.

The punch landed with a wicked thud, his bottom teeth clipping his top and mashed together. Blood bloomed like a wicket flower at the tip of his tongue. He had time to collect himself again, swinging the metal rod and clipping the man upside the head. He tried to run but was quickly tugged backwards.

The door of room 615 cracked open revealing the wide eyes of a child. With looks alone Peter begged him to go back into the room, knowing he had probably been left home alone. All those who knew how wicked the world could be had been smart enough to keep their doors locked but the child was lead to peek by curiosity.

It was then the third man landed another blow, this time to his side. He had a hold of Peter, jerking him backwards like a ragdoll and smashing him into the drywall. Beside him, the door of room 615 slammed shut.

The sound of gunfire rang in his ears. He momentarily wondered if he had died. If he died there in that hallway he would die like his uncle. The world could be cruel. He noticed the third man’s eyes, swollen to comical proportion, his mouth hanging slack-jawed and wide open.

Across the room, the man the other three had called ‘Wade’ stood, gun in hand. The two unoccupied men had recovered from Peter’s dismal blows and had swarmed at the scarred stranger like moths to a flame. With his gun cocked sideways he shot the tallest of the three men in the knee momentarily crumpling him to the ground.

“Ten points!” Wade yelled rounding the three attackers up and leading them back into Peter’s apartment as a hunter leads pray into a trap.

Peter didn’t have time to watch what happened next. He ran to the fire alarm on the far side of the corridor breaking the glass with his knuckles, sending a piercing ring through the building. Screams surged outwards from his apartment but still, Peter had no time to waste. He bolted to room 602, knocking with bloody knuckles.

“Yuri! It’s Peter,” He yelled above the shrill cries of the alarm system.

A small Asian woman emerged. Her lips were pulled into a tight line and brows furrowed, looking as though she had rolled out of bed. She was a Chinatown police officer Peter had gotten to know over the handful of years living in his apartment. Peter had written a piece on her. She was the only female officer in the Chinatown district. Jameson hadn’t liked the article but the paper had sold well, to his surprise.  Peter hadn’t been surprised. New York was filled with minorities and underdogs. People liked to see themselves reflected in the media.

“Parker, what the hell? If this is how you think you’re going to get me to hand over the Chinatown police stats for that paper of yours- wait… what happened to your face?” Peter really didn’t have the time.

“There are people with guns in the building Yuri and the fire alarm is going off. How did you sleep through that?” His tongue felt fat and swollen in his mouth causing his words to slur together.

People were beginning to flood the hallways, looking around perplexed as the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. The sprinkler system had come on in the hallways leaving everyone sopping wet in their wake. Yuri tapped her left ear as if that explained everything.

“I lost my hearing in this ear in the academy when an idiot forgot to put the safety on. Must have been sleeping on my good side.”

“I need help getting everyone out of here. Keep them out of the hallway if you can, get them to take the fire escape or the stairs down to the lobby. There are some dangerous looking guys hanging out around my apartment.”

Yuri scoffed stepping into the hallway and assessing the situation, hands resting squarely on her hips. She didn’t look impressed.

“Dangerous looking guys? Just your type eh Parker? I should have guessed, Broadway girls, billionaire’s sons, sleazy journalists, lucha libre wrestlers and now criminals.”

Peter didn’t have the time to defend himself Yuri was already darting off, guiding people to the stairwells and down their fire escapes, trying to calm the ever-growing mass hysteria. He turned on his heels and headed back to his apartment worried as to what he might find.

Upon re-entering his apartment, he was greeted with the overwhelming reek of acidic chemicals. The main room had been uprooted, items normally scattering his kitchen benchtop and desk were sprawled about the floor. His typewriter lay broken and upturned on the floor and an assortment of his camera lenses were shattered. He didn’t have the money to replace them.

The door to his bathroom was flung open and two unconscious bodies were hunched over face first into the shallow trays of D-76 film developer. The man who had been shot  in the back was propped up in Peter’s shower, eyes glassy. He was still alive but barely. Wade stood in the bathroom holding the previously unconscious man by the scruff of his shirt.

“Alright fuck face, you’re going to make this nice and simple for me. If you tell me who you’re working for and call off the rest of your gang, I’ll kill you now. Don’t and I’ll kill you all slow and painful like.”

The man looked away, not speaking. Wade squared his jaw and grabbed the man’s hand from his side snapping it backwards in one fluid motion. The crack and gnash of bone and flesh brought bile to Peter’s throat. He definitely wasn’t the good guy.

“I can do this all night baby. Come on.” The other man remained silent. He snapped the other hand back.

“Please stop. I have kids man.” He gasped out.

Peter was frozen in shock, his body unresponsive. The scarred man hadn’t noticed him. He was like a shark in a feeding frenzy or a racing horse with blinders. All he saw was the assailant.

“So do I but you didn’t seem to care five minutes ago. Why should I?”

He pressed the gun deep into the man’s shoulder fiddling with the trigger. It was enough to thaw Peter’s bones. He reached out tentatively grabbing the sleeve of Wade’s trench coat, instantaneously feeling him recoil as though he had been shocked. Touch seemed utterly foreign to him.

“Stop,” Peter’s voice was barely audible in his own ears.

Wade pulled the trigger, gun barrel still deeply embedded into his shoulder blade. It clicked without firing.

“Oops. Would you look at that? Still loaded from last night’s round of Russian roulette. This should be fun. I love surprises.”

The man had turned a deathly shade of pale. Peter tugged on the scarred man’s hand again.

“Come on buddy just give me a name. You’re freaking my friend out.”

“My name’s John. I have a wife and two kids I-”

 He pulled the trigger again. It was another blank.

“Boring backstory exposition dump. Don’t care. I want to know who you work for.”

He pulled the trigger again. It was not a blank. Peter’s ears began to ring. He fought the overwhelming urge to jerk his body backwards. He instead covered Wade’s scarred hand with his own, tugging the gun from his grip and tossing it across the room. The assailant hadn’t seemed to notice he was hunched over clutching his shoulder.

“Tony Masters. I work for Tony Masters. Please stop.”

Wade pulled away from Peter, grabbing the man and smashing his head against the porcelain sink, letting his body fall limply onto the tile floor. The once unconscious man was yet again unconscious. Peter looked to Wade with awe and confusion.

“Please don’t give me the doe eyes. I can’t handle the doe eyes.”

A blanket of hush falls over the two men. The room was soaked with the smell of blood, sweat and decaying chemical compounds. Peter felt lightheaded. The room was too small, the air too thin. There were corpses littering his home, blood staining his carpet and tiles. His rent deposit was obliterated. The photos, previously left pinned and hanging to his shower curtain were scattered, torn and stained. He was also going to be fired. Again.

Nothing felt real.

Peter had the habit of seeing the good in people. Some called it a desirable characteristic but time, multiple heartbreaks and misplaced trust had proven to him they were wrong. Yet he still hadn’t learned. He was a child, continually placing his hand on a hot stove, each time surprised that he was burned. He could block out every red flag if a person showed even a glimpse of basic human decency.

Despite everything, Wade had saved him. It had been bloody, brutal and a disproportionate use of force but in a strange way, he had come to Peter’s aid. He had killed two men, shot a third, who was slowly but surely bleeding to death while brutally maiming the other.  In Peter’s mind, Themis’ scale of justice tipped from one side to the next. It wasn’t right but maybe it was necessary. Never the less, the taking of a life wasn’t for Peter to decide. Again, he looked to the dying man. This couldn’t be justice.

“Fuck,” Peter gasped, covering his mouth for fear that the bile resting in the back of his throat would rise.

“I just wanted you to go back inside,” Wade breathed, blue eyes locked into a time and room beyond this one. The eyes that once resembled stretches of ocean were now nothing but ice.

It was then Peter noticed the blood. It was no longer confined to the man’s knuckles. Flecks of congealed blood dusted his cheeks like a spattering of scarlet freckles. His combat boots were scuffed with blood and stained with chemicals.

“Can you go into the other room?” His voice never raised above a whisper.

“It’s not going to be pretty.”

“You can’t kill him,” Peter’s voice is stern but thin. It is the ghost of a voice.

“These are bad people. If I don’t kill him he’s going to come back with more creepy dicks and bigger weapons and next time they are going to come after you too.”

“You said you were a good person. Prove it. I can handle myself just fine.”

Wade pointed to the man still bleeding out in his shower. Several bullet holes had been added to his chest and abdomen.

“Two more seconds with him and you would have been dead.”

“Two more seconds with him and I would have worked a way out of it."

The man scrubbed his face turning scarlet freckles into bloody smears.

“You’re so fucking stubborn.”

“I’m not stubborn.”

The man paced in circles resembling a caged animal or a shark on the trail of blood.

“That would be you proving my point.”  

They had both fallen into a stalemate. New York ambience began to spill into the room. The muffled squeal of the fire alarm droned through the apartment, the shallow breath of the dying man rasped in and out. Peter’s leaky faucet dripped rhythmically.

“I’m going to regret this,” Wade breathed crossing the room and picking up the gun.

Peter furrowed his brow confused as to what would happen next, momentarily questioning- not for the first time that night, if he was going to die. Wade raised the gun, flicking his wrist and pulling the trigger. A bullet embedded itself into the already dying man’s head, placed right between his eyes. If it were not so horrific Peter would have complemented the expert marksmanship. Wade placed the safety of the gun on landing a rough kick to the unconscious man’s groin before turning to leave.

“Fine. No more... unaliving people. I told you I was the good guy.”

Wade was a strange character, an anomaly. He was this strange and tangled mixture of psychotic, manic and eerily calm.

“Come on then. You’re going to need to pack a bag. You can’t stay in this shit hole. Good thing too. The wallpaper is chartreuse. That’s the fucking Pol Pot of colours and don’t even get me started on the shag carpet.”

He moved around the bodies as one would dance, in swift sidesteps with an upturned nose.      

“And where am I going to go?” Peter asked as he tried to follow.

On the way out he managed to tread in a pool of blood. It squelched beneath his feet and every step after became treacherously slippery. He could stay at his Aunt May’s in Queens or maybe at MJ’s Soho apartment, though he could already guess how awkward that would be. Harry had been off somewhere in Europe for over a year, Peter hadn’t heard from him in six months and he was beginning to worry. Maybe he would just go back to sleeping on his friend Johnny’s couch like he always did when times were rough.

“You’re coming with me, kid. If you don’t want you or your loved ones to be sliced and diced by Masters’ men or I could just go back there and kill the guy. Bada-bing bada-boom. You get rid of me I get rid of you.”

Peter squared his jaw and shook his head. He didn’t have flimsy morals.  He was sticking to his guns. He guessed he was a little stubborn.

“Peter, my name is Peter. Please quit calling me kid.”

Wade shot him a wicked grin.

“Well Petey, I’m Wade. Wade Wilson. You can call me whatever you like. Now hurry up and get your stuff. I have a safe house in Hell’s Kitchen but first I have a few loose ends to tie up.”


	2. Touch

 Apartment 612 was different from the rest. It had been saved from the shag carpets which plagued all other rooms in the small Chinatown building. Instead, it had exposed hardwood floors which creaked and groaned at the slightest application of pressure. A strong gust of wind from the open window was enough to cause the old room to sing. Like an arthritic crone, the room was in a perpetual state of groaning.

In the corner of the room, an elderly black woman sat listening to an Elvis vinyl. Peter preferred more modern music like The Beatles. The woman sat glassy-eyed, facing the faded chartreuse wall, looking without seeing. She was blind.

“I was wondering when you were going to stop wasting my time and show up.”

The woman spoke with a bravado Peter had only heard a few times in his life. It was the kind of voice that had been trampled into submission for so long it had hardened and learned to adapt. It was both captivating and commanding.

“I never said I was coming over, old bat,” Wade muttered as he stepped further into the apartment, motioning for Peter to stay where he was standing on the inside of the doorway.

“I heard gunshots and I just assumed. I didn’t think you would be bringing someone with you though.”

She didn’t bother tilting her head in Wade’s direction. Instead, she continued to converse with the wall. She kept her head held high, a slight tension in her jaw. Peter couldn’t work out the relationship between the two. Perhaps she was a parent, but he didn’t think so. There was something ‘other’ to their dynamic. Maybe it was like Peter and his aunt’s relationship, but there still seemed to be an oddly palpable tension he couldn’t put his finger on.

Peter was unsure how to proceed, whether he should enter the room or stay awkwardly lingering in the doorway. Wade again motioned for him to keep quiet by playing the role of an overdramatic mime, placing his finger to his lips.

“You’re crazy Al. It’s just little old me. I thought I was meant to be the crazy one.”

That was another red flag Peter would have to file away, hoping to address it at a later stage. In the meantime, Wade had dropped to his knees near an area of irregularly faded wood. He tapped each floorboard until he stumbled upon one that sounded hollow.

“I can smell cologne. You haven’t worn that since the 50s.”

“I have a hot date to impress. Of course I put on cologne.”

Wade made a point of meeting Peter’s eyes and winking before giving a rough tug on the hollow board revealing a secret stash beneath the floor. Peter self-consciously sniffed the collar of his shirt. He smelled blood, chemicals and the slightest hint of the Dior cologne M.J had given him back when the two were dating. Maybe he should start buying things for himself but cologne is expensive and the shops give him headaches. He had more important things to do.

“Who goes on a date at three in the morning?” The woman probes sceptically, knowing Wade was lying but not actively challenging it. Instead, she was trying to catch him in a lie. Wade, however, didn’t miss a beat.

“Um- have you met me? Do you think I would date someone who did anything at a normal time? My perfect person would go on three a.m. dates with me and finish it off with breakfast at the movies. I think What’s New Pussycat is on at ten and it has to be good. It has my favourite word in it.”

Wade continued looking at Peter as he was speaking, hand still buried deep under the floorboards rummaging around.  He pulled a stack of files from the bowels of the floor examining them and dropping them on the coffee table. He then fitted the floorboard back into place.

“Can you stop storing things in my house? I’m blind, not stupid” She uttered with a slight edge of irritation.

“You know I can’t keep a promise Al.”

The man shrugged off his blood-stained coat, hat and scarf. Beneath he wore another long sleeve shirt. Now his head, hands and neck were exposed, all of which were covered in scars. Peter had the sneaking suspicion the scars covered most of his body. When Wade caught Peter looking he tugged down slightly on the sleeve of his shirt then moved to a chest of drawers at the far side of the room.

He pulled out a set of clothes looking roughly his size and a new overcoat. He motioned quietly for Peter to turn around. The boy furrowed his brow about to question Wade before remembering he had to be silent. He turned around to face the door and pressed his forehead against the plywood. There was the slight sound of rustling fabric.

“The cops are trying to clear the building, in case you missed the fire alarm, the bullets and the hordes of people evacuating. It’s almost like it’s some kind of lazy plot device so you could get a cameo.”

There was more squeaking of floorboards and rustling of clothes.

“It’s going to take more than that to get me to go anywhere. In London during the Blitz our houses were rubble and they were bombing us every other day but we still showed up to work on time. The world’s gone soft Wade.”

Though Peter couldn’t see the woman there was a blasé tone to her voice

“Yeah, yeah and you had to walk to school ten miles through the snow too right?”

“I didn’t go to school so I wouldn’t know.”

“Badass… Look. I’ve gotta run but I’m going to leave some clothes here could you be a doll and wash them for me? You’ve always been better at getting the blood stains out.”

“Wash them yourself. I’m not your housemate or your mother.”

Peter glanced over his shoulder watching as Wade rolled his eyes, making a quick beeline for the door and gathering the files on the way. He had changed his clothes and was now wearing trousers, a deep red button down shirt and a coat. He left his old clothes on the floor and met Peter in the entryway.

“Alright, I’m just going to leave them here anyway. No time for chit-chat I’m in a rush. Three a.m. date and all that.”

Wade was already tugging Peter out the door, desperate for the two to leave before any other questions or inquiries were stated.

“Wade, you’re not in trouble, are you?”

Wade paused about to shut the door before seeming to think better of fleeing without answering.

“No more than usual Al. I’ll call you later so I know when to pick up my clothes.”

Wade closed the door and pulled Peter into the hallway. He quickly began walking, the sixth floor now a ghost town. The door to room 615 was left ajar.

“Sorry about that Petey. I didn’t expect her to be home. She’s a crazy stubborn old thing, wouldn’t get off my back if she thought I was bringing someone over.”

“No worries,” Peter didn’t know how else to reply.

“Get changed in there, then you’ll have to follow me. We can’t go right to the safe house. That’s what everyone would expect you to do. The number one rule of being on the run is to be unpredictable and to blend in.”

“You say that like you’ve been on the run before.’

“You say that like it’s your first time.” Wade wiggled his brows slightly before tugging Peter’s backpack from his shoulder.

Peter had packed up enough to last him three days at most. He hadn’t had time to think, unsure as to how long the unconscious man would remain that way. He had ticked off the necessities in his head and guessed the rest. From this point on, all he truly owned could fit into a backpack. The rest was now either broken or part of a crime scene. Now he could write an article about minimalism without being pretentious. Okay, still pretentious but well informed.

Surprisingly Peter had been in worse situations. During college, he had taken a traineeship at Oscorp labs, while also volunteering for a homeless shelter with his aunt, all the while trying to keep up with his job at the Daily Bugle. His job at the time had been purely a photographer, but Peter found little time to juggle everything life threw at him, so some things slipped through the cracks.

That happened to be his rent. He had lived in a smaller and shittier apartment than his current one but he barely had enough money to feed himself let alone keep up with the $150 per week rent. That’s when he had slept on his friend Johnny’s couch. Maybe that’s where Peter should go now.

“Yeah, it’s my first time on the run. It’s not a common thing normal people do,” Peter defended as he took his backpack from Wade, rummaging about until he found a set of clothes that were clean and nondescript.

“You’d be surprised, you just aren’t hanging around with the right people.”

“I don’t tend to hang around murderers, so maybe your right.”

Peter didn’t know where his own sudden vitriol had sprung from, though it made sense. This man had led people into his home, torn up his life and dragged Peter into some strange world of government agents and mob warlords. This wasn’t his world. It was the world he fought against, through words, through photos and even through his comic strip. He liked to draw superheroes. The world needed more superheroes. He wanted to create one of his own one day, something wholeheartedly new, but it was difficult to do when he was fighting his boss to get a four-panel spread between advertisements and the weather report.

Peter tried to push past Wade and into room 615 to change, wanting the satisfaction of getting the last word. The man had saved his life but he had also ruined it. He also killed people. He was also trying to keep Peter safe. He was doing his head in.

“You’ve got me all wrong kid,” Wade breathed, hovering a hand over Peter’s shoulder. It was as though he had stretched it out to stop him, but had thought better of it and instead just let it hover there in empty space.

“Then prove me wrong.” Peter insisted pushing past him and into the room.

It was strange, the layout of the apartment mirrored that of Peter’s. It was identical yet flipped. He felt as though he had fallen into another dimension entirely. It felt apt. The world he had known two hours ago was totally different from the one he was now living in.

The lights in the room were all off. Peter was only able to see because the curtains had been left open. The room held a slightly red hue thanks to the blinking neon sign advertising wontons at the restaurant across the way. In the corner of the room, bathed in red was the wide eyes of a young boy. His mouth hung slightly agape. His eyes slowly trailed from Peter to some unknown source located just behind the slightly ajar door.

“Wade,” Peter breathed, his voice coming out strangled and panicked.

“You want a little help in there?” There was a hint of amusement to his tone.

Peter turned his head slightly finding himself face to face with the barrel of a gun. A man, dressed in a firefighting uniform held a gun in one hand while the other was buried in the drawer beside the entry. Peter had to think fast. He wracked his brain for every possible way to disarm the man without being shot himself. He also couldn’t let them hurt the kid. There was a slightly snarkier and pettier piece of himself that wanted to prove to Wade that he was capable of protecting himself. He hadn’t had much practice with guys and guns.

Peter used the force of his body to knock the man into the wall and grab the gun from him. It was sloppy and uncertain, ending with another blast of gunfire and a wicket pain shooting through Peter’s shoulder. The child fumbled backwards, trying to reach the safety latch securing the screen door shut. Peter flung the gun across the room, hand trembling as he clutched his shoulder surprised at the pain shooting through his body.

Another blow slammed against his already swollen jaw. Peter tried to recall everything he remembered from the self-defence classes he had taken when he was fourteen, or the boxing he had done with Harry in their later high school years. He thought of the article he had written about the New York, lucha libre scene. He tried his best to duck and dodge out of the way, his hands springing up to protect his face. A wicked pain rippled through his shoulder but he kept his arms up.

The commotion in the room seemed to shake whatever previous hesitations Wade had about entering. He placed himself between Peter and the man. Wade landed a rough push-kick to the assailant’s groin sending him toppling backwards. He pulled a gun from his jacket pocket causing Peter to wonder if he had transferred the gun from his old coat or if he simply had guns in all his coats.

At first, Wade had aimed the gun dead between the man’s eyes but had a moment of hesitation, casting Peter a sideways glance. Peter was too busy hunching over clutching his throbbing shoulder to acknowledge it. Wade adjusted his aim and instead shot him twice in both kneecaps causing the man to let out an excruciating yelp. Wade then landed a rough kick to his head knocking him out cold.

“I’m giving myself twenty points for that one.”

“Wade?” Peter tried to get his attention but his mind seemed elsewhere.

“Right new plan, we are getting out of here now.”

Peter looked to the child, fists banging on the glass trying to get out of the room. Wade followed his glance and groaned.

“I’ve saved one person today that’s my monthly quota, come on.” Peter didn’t budge.

“He’s going to make me save the kid,” Wade muttered to himself in disbelief.

He approached the child slowly, with his hands raised as though showing he meant no harm. The boy cowered, folding down into himself.

“It’s okay little dude, I’ll get you out of here.”

He unlocked the door leading out to the terrace and fire exit watching as the child slowly moved out. Wade looked over at Peter beckoning for him to follow.

“Come on, this exit’s as good as any. There are still a bunch of cops around the front of the building if the kid goes there they should keep him out of trouble. We can’t get seen though. You can’t trust the authorities Masters has men all over the place. He’s probably getting them to scope the place for the files.”

Peter nodded to show he understood but struggled to stand upright. He removed his hand from his shoulder unsurprised when he noticed a patch of blood pooling and staining his grey sweater. It was a deep, port wine red. Peter had remembered seeing the same colour painted on Mary Janes’ nails. Wade’s face seemed to morph through several emotions in a matter of seconds. He jumped from confused to shocked to understanding to pained. His eyes then glazed over and he was on another planet entirely.

“I got shot,” Peter stated the obvious because he felt like they both needed to hear it to fully assess the situation.

“Lead with that next time kid.” Wade suddenly sounded out of breath. His eyes darted over Peter’s frame.

“It’s just the shoulder… The guy was aiming for my head though so I call it a win.”

For the first time all night, Wade didn’t appear to know what to do. Peter made the first move, placing his hand back on his shoulder, trying to apply pressure to slow the bleeding. He then moved forward, past Wade and out onto the terrace. If the building was soon to be swarming with people who wanted something from Wade and by some odd tangential extension Peter, they needed to leave fast.

The kid quickly began to skitter down the fire escape, pulling down the retractable ladders for the other two men. Wade was by Peter’s side. He was full of awkward hesitations. His hand was oddly hovering over Peter’s arm. It was not close enough to touch but indicated the intention to. It was a struggle to climb down the narrow ladders, using one hand to keep pressure on his wounded shoulder and the other being far weaker after feeling like it had been blown to bits.

“You can’t hand the kid off to the police if you think whoever is after you might have people in the NYPD. That guy saw you with the kid too. How do you know they won’t hurt him as well?”

Peter missed a rung groaning as his hand slipped from the ladder. There was a rough hand pulling him upwards before he had the chance to slip further.

“Just watch what you’re doing. I’ll play hero and work something out.”

When Peter’s feet finally reached the ground, he felt them cave underneath him. He didn’t quite reach the concrete instead, he was pulled up into a half standing position by Wade. He tucked himself under Peter’s good shoulder.

“Hey. Hey. We’ve gotta keep going okay? No time for face planting in the gutter. I know that’s how I like to end most nights too but that’s going to have to wait.”

“Did you know there’s roughly five litres of blood in the average male body?” Peter questioned.

“I thought it was something like that. You’re a walking encyclopaedia aren’t you?” He scoffed while rounding up the kid.

Wade began talking to him. He seemed to give the child some instructions Peter didn’t hear. He kept fading in and out of consciousness. Everything sounded as though he was underwater.

“I think I’m bleeding a bunch.”

Peter pulled his hand away to inspect it. The blood loss was getting to his head. He felt the rough leather-like surface of Wade’s scarred hand pressing over his own. He applied more pressure causing Peter to gasp roughly.

“Keep your hand there.” Wade insisted.

“It hurts,” Peter’s voice was muffled and childlike.

“I know. Been there, done that. Trust me. Hey Petey, do you know what street we’re on?”

“Baxter street, I think.”

Wade nodded causing Peter’s frame to shake. He continued to mumble under his breath debating something with himself. From what Peter caught of the conversation he was deliberating if Peter could walk to his aforementioned safe house. The resounding answer seemed to be no. Finally, a loud groan escaped his lips.

“Alright. New, new plan.”

Wade shifted Peter into a more comfortable position while reaching his free hand for the child’s. The boy hesitated. He touched Wade’s hand with one finger before pulling back. It took him another half a beat to grab Wade’s hand. He began guiding the two with new direction and purpose.

“Where are we going?” Peter asked eyes focused down on his feet trying desperately to keep up without stumbling.

“I’ve got an old army buddy close by. I’ll patch you up there.”


	3. The Bowery X

The band of misfits slipped quietly through back alleys until they reached the place they were looking for. At this point, Peter was sickly pale and beads of sweat dripped from his brow. Wade had fallen into a state of constant conversation. Peter couldn’t keep up with his rambling, but he wasn’t sure he was supposed to. Wade didn’t have to speak too loudly as the two were very close. He still had to hold Peter upright. The child hadn’t said a word.

After twenty slow minutes of stumbling, they reached a doorway on the edge of Bowery. Above the door frame hung a glowing purple X which seemed to mark the spot of their destination. The windows to the building were blacked out and boarded. Wade tugged the child behind him, telling him to keep close. He then returned to mumble at Peter’s ear about anything and everything trying to keep him conscious. Peter was struggling to keep up and as Wade open the door his ears filled with chatter. They had stumbled into a bar.

“Welcome to the Bowery X kid. Get ready to clutch your conservative pearls and have your mine thoroughly fucked.” Wade chuckled his breath hot on Peter’s neck.

 It was a cramped space, decorated with deep brown wood floors and table tops. The old wallpaper had begun to peel, exposing both drywall and the skeletal wooden bones of the structure. A boxing ring had been crammed into the far corner of the room. It was the first of many strange sights Peter would see in the bar.

A bulky man standing just above five feet in height was squaring up against a behemoth six-foot mass of brawn and winning. The betting paper and the money of the watchers were leaping from hand to hand. The place smelled of alcohol, tobacco and sweat. Beneath the chatter, the jukebox was playing The Rolling Stones.

The patrons were the widest array of people Peter had ever seen in one place. There were people of different races and genders speaking different languages. There were men in skirts and women in suits. At a table closest to Peter there was a group of amputees with dog tags, playing poker for a prosthetic arm. This was odd as half the players did, in fact, have both arms. He saw a man kiss another man on the cheek.

Cowering under a table two teenagers were inhaling Benzedrine while trying to stack a tower of cards and discussing the importance of the colour blue. Peter had seen or heard of these things in solidarity a handful of times but having them all in one place at one time seemed mind-blowing. It felt like a fever dream stemming from his loss of blood.

Wade pushed the two through the crowd and to the front of the boxing ring. No one gave them a sideways glance. In this scene, Wade seemed perfectly normal and no one batted an eye at the small and bleeding man. Just a regular night, so it seemed. The kid had now tucked himself in very close to Wade’s side, small feet standing on his blood-stained combat boots. A poster taped to the back wall closest to the ring read ‘Tonight: The Wolverine VS Sabretooth’ followed by a slew of equally comical names of fighters and opponents.

“Wolverine,” Wade called loudly shooting a free hand up to wave. The swift action caused Peter’s body to jerk. His shoulder screamed in protest. Wade’s voice seemed to blend in with the other patrons’ chants.

“Logan!” Wade called louder, this new name seemed to get the man’s attention. His head snapped in their direction.

Wade waved less vigorously this time, careful not to shake Peter. The smaller man looked from Wade to Peter. His opponent took advantage of his distracted state, trying to land a punch but failing. Logan shoved him against the ropes.

“We’re going for a quickie in the backroom and could use a hand. Hurry up.”

The look of irritation was written clear as day on the man’s face never the less he began to change the way he fought, less dancing around and more landing blows. Wade dragged Peter and the boy around to the back of the bar scooting past the bartender.

“Weasel do you still keep the first aid kit in the backroom?”

A scrawny and bespectacled man looked up from the gin and tonic he had been pouring. He gave the little group a once over and groaned.

“Still in the back. You’ve got to stop bringing in prostitutes with bullet wounds. It’s bad for business.”

Wade went momentarily stiff, looking down at Peter’s hunched over frame. He moved to push Peter’s sweat-soaked hair from his eyes pausing half an inch back. He decided against the action letting his hand drop.

“Rude Weas. He’s not a prostitute. Well… I’ve only known him for a few hours, so he could be but he has this holier-than-thou vibe to him. I’d pay to sleep with him though that’s for sure. Anyway, no time to chat. Can you get one of your guys to take over and set up a room upstairs with the little guy?”

Weasel adjusted his glasses and groaned motioning for one of the other employees to take his place.  

“Come with me, little dude. We’ve got a pack of cards and some Cuban cigars. Everything a kid could ask for.” Wade rolled his eyes.

“I’ve got action figures, comic books and the full Barbie dream house in my old locker. I also have whisky but I think that was a my childhood thing-” Wade paused looking from Peter to Weasel seeing the disapproving looks mirrored on both their faces.

“Definitely a my childhood thing.”

Wade pulled his attention back to Peter. He readjusted their position and stumbled into the back-storage room struggling to clear a space. Wade then lied him down on the floor with a surprising amount of care.  

“I’m going to move your hand kid. I couldn’t see an exit wound so I think it’s stuck in there.”

Wade’s rough hand enclosed around Peter’s, removing it from his shoulder. Pain momentarily took over, the world zooming away from his grasp. He was swallowed by the black hole vastness which was the pain. When the world stopped spinning, Wade was kneeling several inches from his wounded shoulder. A large first aid kit was tucked in close beside him, in his scarred hand and embedded in Peter’s shoulder was a large set of tweezers.

“Okay. Good news is that I can see it. Bad news is that it kind of looks like a scrambled egg in there.”

Peter dared a look and instantly regretted it. He had been with his uncle Ben while he lay dying in the street. At that time, he too had dared to look at the wound. Ben had looked not unlike Peter imagined he now looked. Bloody, broken and pale but Peter wasn’t dying. He didn’t let the idea enter his mind. The shoulder should be non-lethal if it missed his artery. Judging by the time that had passed between being shot and now, he could hazard a guess it had missed. Otherwise, he would already be dead. There was the additional factor that he wasn’t going into a hospital, he was instead being worked upon by Wade Wilson: qualifications currently unknown. Alright. Peter is beginning to panic.

He looked down at the gaping wound in his shoulder, the flesh peeling back and pulsating with pain. The old blood around the bullet wound had spread to stain the majority of Peter’s left side like dye in water. It had turned a blackish-brown and was beginning to crust and reek. The centre of the wound, however, continued to ooze scarlet blood. It had morphed into one of Venus’ volcanos. Peter writhed in discomfort.  At the sight, Wade cringed and rested a hand on Peter’s good side.

“Okay, I know this is going to hurt like a mother fucker but you’re going to have to keep still.”

“Your bedside manner is amazing you know that?” Peter gasped trying to use humour to hide his worry.

“Sorry bud. I would usually whip out my nurse costume but that’s at home.” It looked like the two had the same coping strategy.

Wade then stood pulling several bottles of assorted alcohols from the shelf and a pair of surgical scissors from his first aid kit. He offered Peter the choice of vodka, whisky or rum. He was struggling to read the words on the labels, everything fading in and out of focus. Alcohol was the last thing he needed.

“I don’t drink,” He informed.

The mere idea of it in his state made his stomach uneasy. Peter Parker had his own handful of self-destructive habits. He always slept either too much or too little, often the latter. He forgot to eat at normal times and would consume more coffee in a month than the average person would in a lifetime. He had a habit of throwing himself into things or people too wholeheartedly, too quickly without thinking of the ramification. He, however almost never drank. There was something about the lack of control and vulnerability in it that made him uneasy.

“We don’t have any fancy sedatives. Getting wasted is the closest thing we’ve got unless you want me to skulk around for some drugs. In a place like this people are sure to have something. I left my stash of cocaine under the floorboards at Al’s place. Rooky mistake.”

That was another red flag Peter was going to have to ignore. Like a wary wild animal, he inched his good hand closer to Wade’s taking the bottle of vodka. He took several long swigs coughing and spluttering as he went.

“What is this place?” Peter asked at last, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Wade gestured for him to keep drinking. Despite the foul taste in his mouth and the bitter scratching sensation in his throat, Peter took another swig. He had to fight to keep it down.

“It’s the brain baby of some old guy Logan knows. He had this idea of having ‘safe spaces’ for us island of misfit toys. Most of the places are a lot tamer than this. Schools or old stuffy apartment buildings. Most of the places are old buildings the government can’t be fucked fixing. You can find them pretty easy if you know what you’re looking for,” Wade explained, still inspecting the wound.

“I’ve never heard of it before,” Peter mused setting down the bottle of vodka, unable to swallow anymore without it coming back up again.

“That’s the point kid. We can’t have clean cut guys like you messing up the fun.”

Peter pulled a face, offended at the statement. His jaw yelped at the movement. He wasn’t the uptight, tight ass Wade thought him to be. Hell, he wished he knew about this place sooner. He could imagine himself hanging out at the place, if for no other reason than to watch the wide array of people and marvel. This place was worlds away from the life he knew. As far as Peter was concerned he might as well have been on the surface of the moon.

“I wouldn’t mess up the-.”

The door to the room swung open and in entered Logan, drenched in sweat. His hair resembled that of a porcupine, sticking up and jutting out at odd angles. A reddish-blue bruise was beginning to bloom over his clavicle, visible through his white tank top. He held an ice pack to his shoulder, in a non-committal manner. A cigar hung from his split lip. Peter couldn’t help but wonder if it stung.

“Logan, just on time,” Wade declared as he used the surgical scissors to cut through the collar of Peter’s shirt.

The action surprised Peter so much that his bad arm jerked outwards to shove Wade away. He had mustered up enough strength to surprise the both of them. Wade fell backwards half an inch and Peter let out a yelp of pain. Confusion painted over Wade’s face before understanding seemed to dawn on him. His lips pulled together, pressed in a tight line, brows drawn downwards. He was clearly irritated by something. It took him a moment to compose his face.

“I wasn’t doing whatever you think I was doing. I’ve gotta get the shirt out of the way. It’s easier to cut it off than it is to try and get it back over your head with that shit shoulder. Also, homophobia’s not cool. Even if all the other kids are doing it. We’re not all like they say in the papers.”

Peter was surprised by that last bit, blinking several times in confusion trying to work out how the other man had come to that conclusion. He supposed Wade had made a few questionable side comments throughout the night but Peter hadn’t been bothered by them, hell he was normally guilty of doing something similar. If his pale cheeks could muster a blush they would have been rosy. He shut his eyes in order for the room to stop spinning.

“That’s not… It didn’t have anything to do with- you’ve got me all wrong.”

Peter didn’t want to be having this conversation. He wasn’t capable of having it in the state he was in. He also felt the simple reply of ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ wasn’t going to work out in his favour no matter how true it was.

“Logan, you do it.”

Wade didn’t even acknowledge Peter’s half-hearted explanation. It looked like he really hit a nerve. Logan snuffed out his cigar and moved to take the scissors but Peter intercepted them, pulling himself into a half sitting position his shoulder screaming in protest.

“I’ll do it myself,” He insisted hacking away at his shirt’s fabric and handing the scissors back to Wade.

Now the older man just looked slightly confused. Peter had realised in the few hours the two had known each other they seemed to have that effect on one another.

“Can you just tell me what you’re going to do before you do it? Just keep talking, it kind of helps to calm me down.”

Logan scoffed at that, seeming to think Peter was making a big mistake, all the while inspecting Peter’s already swollen jaw. He removed the ice pack from his shoulder as Peter lied back down he offered it to the younger man. With some trepidation he took it, using it as a makeshift pillow. It had already begun to melt and sweat but the cool sensation against his throbbing jaw was a welcome one. Wade continued staring at him, perplexed.

“No one has ever asked him to talk more. I sure as fuck haven’t,” Logan jeered.

“Talk more. That’s something I can do. Okay. Alright. No pressure. So, we are going to pour this premium whisky over the scrambled eggs shoulder, so it doesn’t get infected. Why the most expensive whisky you ask? Mostly just to piss Weasel off. He owes me money anyway from this bet we had last week where- oh before that. Logan’s here to keep you steady. Back in ‘Nam I roundhouse kicked my doctor through the med tent when he tried to get this bullet out of my leg. Well, it wasn’t really the leg. It was the upper thigh, lower crotch area. Fucking cruel shot. There was blood spurting everywhere. Think of those fancy fountains but instead of naked babies spitting water it was my leg pissing blood. I guess I could have got Weasel to hold you down but he has noodle arms. Logan is cool with you getting violent, that’s kind of his thing, plus he’s better at stitching. Anyway, that brings us back to the bet-.”

Logan pinned down Peter’s good arm and both legs while Wade held the injured one. He continued to talk, almost without breathing as he began to pour the whisky onto the torn scrap of Peter’s shirt. He had so many questions. When had Wade been in Vietnam? If it was for the war they hadn’t started sending U.S. troops in until this year. The way Wade spoke about the events made it seem as though it was a distant memory.  

Peter was just glad the other man no longer seemed to be mad at him. He instead seemed to be taking up Peter’s method of filing away oddities and inquiries for a time when the two finally ground to a halt and could speak to one another without a constant timer hanging above their heads, without the constant threat hovering in the next room over.

Peter’s train of thought was send grinding to a halt as the alcohol dowsed cloth was applied to his shoulder. He found himself gasping out, body trying to jerk away but failing as Logan held him steady. This sensation filled him with more panic. He shut his eyes from the bloody scene, trying to focus on Wade’s nonsensical rambling.

“Okay. This was the bit I told you was going to hurt like a mother fucker. Though the next bit is probably not going to be much better. We have some numbing cream so I’m going to put that on too but it’s not going to do too much.”

“Not helping,” Peter hissed through gritted teeth, his fingernails making crescent moons rise in the palms of his hands.

“Okay. Well um. I’m going to have to start trying to take this thing out then Logan and I will switch and he’ll stitch you up all pretty like. I remember in your apartment you had some comic book posters, right? Have you ever read the one-? I can’t remember the name… there are dinosaurs in it. It started with-,” Wade then proceeded to describe the entire plot of the first five issues of the said comic while working at removing the bullet from Peter’s shoulder.

Peter kept blacking out during the process, pain often taking him to someplace cold, quiet and dark. Whenever he would emerge from it he would latch on to Wade’s odd rambles, letting it remind him where he was and what in turn was going on. The conversation moved from comics to films to odd old war stories all of which Peter would likely forget once the whole ordeal was over.

It was in one of the periods of darkness that Wade and Logan traded places. There was a dull throbbing and tugging sensation at his shoulder. Peter opened his eyes and looked to his good hand, surprised to see he had latched it onto Wade’s arm. The man didn’t stir nor mind. He had instead taken up singing. He must have got a glimpse at Peter’s record collection before breaking it with Masters’ men’s skulls. He hummed everything from The Beatles, to Bob Dylan to The Beach Boys.

Time seemed to become non-existent and the world around him a muted mutter. Outside the room, the world spun on in muffled music, mumbles and yells. Inside the room, people traded places, they came and left as an indeterminable amount of time passed. Wade talked to both Logan and Weasel for a long while. Peter wasn’t in a state where he could gather the fragments of the conversation in a way that would make sense.

For a while, he and Wade were left alone in the room. Wade seemed to be able to hold up a conversation all on his own. The monotony was shattered by a surge of chaos in the bar outside. The door to the back room swung open, smacking the back wall with a thud, shaking the bottles on the shelves. Peter tried to open his eyes but his vision was blurred. Someone had removed his glasses. He tried to move but his body was locked and screamed in protest.

“The feds are here. I think someone tipped them off.” It was the bartender, Weasel’s voice.

“Three guesses as to who,” Wade scoffed at Peter’s side.

“We can’t have pigs crawling around man. We’ve got drugs, coming out of our ass. We’re serving minors. We have illegal immigrants and I don’t even have a liquor licence. Oh fuck, we’re breaking so many rules.  One of the old World War Two vets pegged a serving tray at a guy like it was a Frisbee. They’re keeping them distracted but we’ve got to get out now.”

“Do you guys still have the backup place in Brooklyn?” Wade asked, now moving to a standing position, fiddling with something else on the inside of his coat.

“Yes?” Weasel sounded more as though he were asking a question than answering one.

“What about the cops? Are they all Master’s guys?” Weasel then hesitated.

“I think some of them are legit. Still pains in the ass though.”

“Alright, no worries then. We just move onto plan B,” Wade sounded flippant.

“What is plan B?” Weasel seemed to know better than to trust his tone.

“Plan Blow this place up and cut your losses. No place, no crimes. Easy peasy.”

For a moment, Weasel just made a strangled sound while the world beyond the backroom fell into chaos.

“It’ll be easy. Just tell the Frisbee man with a hero complex and one armed Mcgee to keep the dudes distracted. Get them to lead the cops into the street while Logan gets everyone out. Then we pour out all the expensive booze, turn on the gas ovens in the kitchen and cause a little accidental explosion. I slip out the back and everyone is saved.”

“Everyone is saved?” There is an odd nuance to Weasel’s voice. It didn’t sound surprised, merely disappointed.

“Yeah, Plan B. First thought best thought Weas. Keep up.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good plan, people could get hurt,” Peter finds his voice coming out as the ghost of a voice, thin and shaky.

“Yeah well, we’ve done your idea once today and that didn’t work out all fine and dandy so now it’s my turn.”

The blurred constellation which was Logan emerged from the doorway looking nothing if not unimpressed.

“You’re talking about burning down the place we’ve been trying to build up for years. There are people staying upstairs. We have a bar full of people. Now you want to burn it down and start again. Fuck okay let’s do that,” Logan hissed through gritted teeth.

There was a loud shatter as Logan flung something at the shelves on the back wall causing the glass bottles to topple. Outside a commanding voice boomed for everyone to stay still and get down. Peter felt alcohol pool around his body. He tried to sit but the darkness threatened to pull him under again. Wade went over to rummage through the mess, finding a box of matches had been the culprit.

“We’ll do your plan but this is the last time I’m helping you out with anything Wade,” There was a rough finality to his voice. He didn’t wait for Wade to respond. He stormed out the back room and into the fray.

Weasel still stood, half cowering in the corner clearly not used to this kind of confrontation. He brushed himself off and cursed before picking up one of the unscathed bottles and tossing it to the ground in frustration.

“Was it worth it?” Weasel asked voice soft and venomous. When Wade didn’t answer he continued.

“What you stole from them, was it worth it?”

“It’s never worth it,” Wade’s voice was uncharacteristically soft.

He moved to where Peter lay on the ground, trying to pull him back into a standing position but Peter’s legs gave way and the whole world when black. In his dreams, the world was on fire. It was so real he could smell it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Comic book Logan is canonically 5.3 feet. A fact I shall never get over.


	4. Safe House

No sunlight came through the closed curtains of the unfamiliar room. Never the less, Peter Parker knew it was morning. The room smelled of morning. The aroma of oil and burnt meat mingled with that of flour and sickly sweet maple syrup. Bacon and batter sizzled as a cartoon theme song trumpeted through the air. It all felt too loud in Peter’s ears. He squinted through the blur, finding his glasses resting on the bedside table.

From what Peter could see the apartment was slightly bigger than his own sporting an open plan kitchen, dining and living room, with a separate bedroom where he now resided. The door had been left ajar. This apartment, though bigger seemed far cosier than Peter’s place. When it came to minimalism this place was on the opposite end of the spectrum. All flat surfaces were covered with something. The bedside table was cluttered with comic books, action figures and other assorted trinkets. A stuffed animal rested on the end of the bed and an assortment of liquors littered the top of a set of dresser draws. It wasn’t exactly messy. The floors were free of hazards and the only clothes left lying about was a trench coat and feather a boa draped over the foot of the bed.

Peter tried to move but felt a dull thrum of pain dance across his shoulder. For a moment, he felt nothing but blind panic. He looked down at his body, half covered in sheets. He was shirtless and his shoulder was covered in a large gauze plaster.

It took a moment longer for the events of the previous night to catch up to him. Was it the previous night at all? How much time had passed while Peter had been sleeping? He let a muffled groan escape his lips, head flopping back down onto the pillow instantly regretting the choice as pain shot through him again.

“Good morning to you too sunshine.”

Wade’s face tentatively appeared in the doorway, looking the man over questioningly. Peter looked over at him lips pouting in concentration. There was an awkward hesitation to the other man’s movements.

“Are you actually awake this time? You’re not just going to roll over and throw up on my floor again?” Wade mused stepping into the room. That explained the foul taste in Peter’s mouth.

In the light of day, it became more apparent how mangled and scarred the other man’s body was. Peter wasn’t disgusted by it as the man clearly seemed to think he would be. Throughout their time together he had constantly been trying to conceal his wounds. He tried to make sure they never touched as though what he had could be spread through contact. Again, Peter knew it couldn’t.

“Really awake,” He mumbled, voice raw and scratchy.

Wade held up a hand indicating for Peter to wait. He then darted out of the room, leaving the door fully open this time. The child from Peter’s Chinatown apartment complex sat on the floor in front of the T.V. watching a cartoon ant send hordes of his ant friends to steal food from a picnic. He was busy burying his fork into pre-cut slices of maple-covered pancakes. Wade returned to the bedroom with a glass of water and an odd assortment of breakfast foods. Bacon, eggs, cereal, pancakes and toast all coincided together on the one plate.

“I didn’t know what the kid wanted and he’s still not talking so I opted for everything,” Wade explained, shoving his stack of comics to one side and setting the food down on the bedside table. He handed the water to Peter.

“What happened last night at the bar? How did we get here? Where is here?” Peter’s voice began to thin as he spoke. He took a sip of water, grateful for the sudden cooling relief it gave him.

“Two nights ago, actually. You slept right through Friday. Well, the plan went off without a hitch- mostly. We got everyone out in time. A few people were too close. Most of them were pigs. No one died though. So that’s a win. I’ve got Weasel tracking down the kid’s family. He’s coming over later to take him somewhere safe until then. Logan’s still too pissed off to talk to me. We’re finally at the safe house I was telling you about.”

Wade pushed the plate of food towards Peter. He didn’t know how much he could stomach, though when he thought about it he felt a pang of hunger. He tried to sit up but cringed at the pain in his shoulder. Wade moved closer hesitating before helping Peter sit up.

“So, if the kids leaving soon when am I going?” Peter asked taking a forkful of bacon with a hum of content as he felt the crispy, greasy creature slide down his throat. His jaw, however, was now the main culprit of his pain.

“Whenever- I mean. I’m not kidnapping you. It’s just- it’s not safe to go with Masters still trying to get back at me. His men saw us together. They probably think I was hiding the files at your place. Kid, I don’t keep people close to me because I do high-risk shit like this all the time. It’s my job. People I love get hurt. It’s the fucked up circle jerk of pain that is my life. If they think hurting you could hurt me they’ll do it in a heartbeat. They’re cold-hearted mother fuckers- which puts us in a tricky situation.”

Peter thought about this for a moment, his brows furrowing. It didn’t make sense, not really. There were plenty of other people Wade had been caught with. There were Logan and Weasel, as well as some of the other bar patrons and the kid. Wade didn’t seem to fear as much for them yet he had known them longer and was close with them.

“Why aren’t you worried about Logan or Weasel then?” Wade let out a heavy sigh and lowered his head.

“Because Tony Masters worked with Logan and I back in special forces. He knows Logan and I have a love, hate relationship. Most of the time Logan will say it’s hate but that Canadian, weasel-bear is secretly soft on me. It’s the same with Weasel. It’d be pretty useless trying anything with them. But Tony knows when I’m… with someone I won’t let anyone fuck with them and- I mean obviously, we aren’t… together. No way in hell- no offence. You have a pretty face kid but we would drive each other crazy I can tell. What I’m saying is it’s not out of character for me to be with someone -like you.”

There was an odd trepidation to the way he spoke that caused Peter almost to laugh, the way Wade constantly beat around the bush as though he was scared to even say the word. It wasn’t as though Peter had grown up entirely sheltered. He knew how to join the dots.

“You’re gay? So, Masters probably thinks we’re…”

What was the right word to use? They didn’t use other words, did they? Peter didn’t think so from what he had gathered while photographing and interviewing individuals at the sexual revolution marches.

“Partners?” Peter continued hoping he had gotten the wording at least somewhat right.

“Yeah, something like that and I just like people,” Wade replied slowly as though thinking it over.

“People?”

“Men, women- either, neither. Whatever. I’m a big picture guy. I like someone and work out the rest later.”

Peter thought about this for a moment. It was a novel concept for him to get his head around. He understood it, but he had never heard attraction explained that way. Within the confines of hushed conversation, he had heard of people who liked both men and women but he had often heard others discount such claims. People often treated it as an impossibility for an individual to contain the multitudes required to love both sexes.

Peter didn’t really have an opinion on it. He never understood the uproar and shame entangled with same-sex relationships of any kind but to voice such an opinion always ended with people giving him odd looks. Though, they had given him the same odd looks in previous years when he had shown support for interracial marriage and day by day it was looking as though it would be a reality. He supposed he had been taught not to have an opinion on the matter because the matter wasn’t to be talked about.

“Okay, so you like… people? Like bisexuality. That’s a thing, isn’t it?”

To hide how awkward Peter felt about the topic of conversation he shoved another heaping forkful of bacon into his mouth. He figured the longer his mouth was full the longer he could think over his next response.

“That’s a thing too. But I’m not sure it fits. I’ve tried tossing the word around but it doesn’t feel right. It’s like when you’re a kid and you try on your dad’s boots and they’re comfortable enough but they don’t fit, you know? Then if it’s my childhood your dad comes home and hits you over the head with the boots. So maybe my dad is society or something in this metaphor- but mostly just a scumbag in real life,” Wade shrugged nonchalantly as he reached over and stole a forkful of eggs from Peter’s plate. He couldn’t work out if he was serious or joking.

“It kind of fell apart at the end, but I get what you mean,” Peter mused moving to steal back his fork before Wade could finish the whole thing.

“But being bisexual is a thing and that’s fine too- for someone to be that, if they want to be that.” The look Wade gave him was a little too pointed for Peter’s liking.

“I know it’s fine, totally fine. More than fine,” Peter spoke in short, clipped sentences taking another heaping forkful of scrambled eggs to stop himself adding any more ‘fines’ to the space between them.

“Right, totally fine. You aren’t freaking out at all,” There was a smirk to Wade’s voice.

“I saw you kill three men in my apartment, shoot some others and torch a bar, but you think this is what I’m going to freak out over?” Peter deflected, touching a hand to his swollen jaw and cringing.

“You should have seen the other guys,” Wade smirked gesturing to Peter’s jaw.

Peter placed the plate back on the bedside table and ghosted his fingers over the swollen skin. It stung, a sensation he wasn’t used to, not in several years at least. He hadn’t been the most loved child in school. He had an unfavourable combination of character traits. His typically more delicate nature, love for learning and smart mouth got him into trouble with most of his school peers. He had learnt to fight for a number of reasons but had never truly gotten to use any of them more than once. He remembered getting into a fight with a boy named Flash Thomson. Peter’s high school experience consisted of the two boys continually pushing each other’s buttons, willing the other to snap. Surprisingly Peter was the first to slip up. It ended with one black eye, a sprained ankle and two concussion shared between the two. Peter had never seen his Uncle Ben more disappointed in him than he had been that day.

“Where did you learn to throw a punch like that? I was expecting you to break your thumb or your wrist. Both of which I’ve done. Look I got a good party trick out of it though,” Wade shook Peter from his thoughts by bending back his thumb at an awkward angle that should have been impossible.

“My uncle got me boxing when I was younger. I wasn’t that good at it though. I broke my thumb in two places. I’ve broken my wrist before too but it was in a less cool way. Compound fracture and everything.”

Wade looked intrigued but Peter shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell that story to a complete stranger, was he? Wade’s shoe nudged Peter’s leg gently.

“Don’t leave a guy hanging. I’m already emotionally invested.” Peter rolled his eyes. It looked like he was about to tell that story.

“This girl I used to date did ballet. Her partner broke an ankle before a dance recital so I said I’d do it with her. We pushed all our apartment furniture into the hallway and for a week straight she tried to teach me this stupid dance. Long story short, the night before the recital I dropped her and took a swan dive, face first into the floor. I tried to catch myself and- well you know the rest.” Wade was laughing. Great.

Peter tentatively held up his wrist where a small crescent moon scar marked the place the bone had exited. Wade reached out and examined it with a small approving nod of his head.

“Wicked battle scar. Did you have to wear those tights and everything? I think it’s a key part of the story so I can picture it just right.” Peter scoffed and fought an eye roll.  

“Yes, and that story never leaves this room.”

Wade hid a smirk but nodded regardless. He ran a hand over his head and looked downwards as though trying to give himself a moment to pull himself together.

“What story? I’ve already forgotten about it?” He couldn’t last the whole sentence without the smile returning.

At the doorway, the unnamed child peeked his head in, holding an empty plate and gesturing towards the T.V. The cartoon was now replaced by the news. It showed two groups in heated protest, half for the war, half against yelling over each other in the streets. The police were trying to quell the protesters while the news station was trying to get closer to the action.

The image then changed to the scorched remains of the Bowery X, identified as an abandoned apartment complex and possible opium den. This image cut away to Peter’s building, showing the sea of individuals loitering outside and a gathering of fire trucks lining the streets while a body was carted out to an ambulance. It was overcut by a news anchor prattling on about political unrest, arson and the rise in violent crime. In the time Peter had slept man still hadn’t landed on the moon but The Soviet Union was attempting to send a probe to Venus. 

“No more cartoons little dude?” Wade asked climbing off the bed. The child shook his head sadly.

Wade moved towards the child and the main room before pausing and looking over his shoulder at Peter. He was momentarily captivated by the news broadcast. The world, as always was going to hell and it made Peter antsy. He had the overwhelming urge to do something, though was unsure as to where to even begin.

“Are you just going to stay in bed all day then?” Wade asked leaning against the doorway and ushering the child out of the room.

“The kid and I are going to draw some groovy crayon masterpieces. I’ll have to make some space for them on the fridge. I’ve got some up already. Half of them are from when my kid Ellie was three and the other half I did a few months back when I was Jonesing. I’ll let you guess which one’s which.”

Peter sat up, testing how he was on his feet before standing. His arms awkwardly wrapped around his exposed abdomen. He would rather just have a second for himself to think.

“Where did you put my backpack?” He asked, wanting to cover himself up rather than remaining naked from the waist up. Wade pulled a face.

“About that… It may or may not have been left in a burning building.” Peter groaned, this time from frustration rather than pain.

“Right,” Peter’s voice was barely a whisper.

In what seemed like no time at all he had lost everything he ever owned. He had nothing, not even a shirt. He wanted to crawl back into the bed, that wasn’t his and pretend this whole ordeal wasn’t happening. He wanted to wake up a year ago when he had a job, a place, an internship and a girlfriend. He and M.J. were never built to work. They were both too driven by different goals. She was too wild of a creature to ever truly want to settle and Peter was often too lost in his own head, too busy off trying to save the world.

It was at times like this he wanted to crawl into bed and hold her, breathe in her hair that looked and smelled like cherries. Whether it was her shampoo or perfume Peter hadn’t learnt to discern but she always smelled of it so maybe it had always just been her. Maybe some blessed genetic anomaly had made her skin smell of cherries while Peter’s skin and all the women that had come after her, just smelled of skin, sweat or soap.

He had asked her to marry him as stupid as it may have been. He always knew he would end up jilted by her but he still tried. The thing about Mary Jane Watson was that she was made of smoke, hard to catch and impossible to hold. She had said no, too quickly to the proposal. She had always made it clear exclusivity wasn’t her strong suit, Peter knew that but still, he had hoped. As pathetic as it was, when the world crumbled around him he wanted her. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

“Kid? I’ve got some shirts in the top drawer. Take whatever you want mi casa es su casa. Tacos and burritos. You know?” Wade interrupted Peter’s thoughts.

“Huh? Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

Peter moved to look through the drawers struggling to keep his bad shoulder still. Wade continued to linger in the doorway, looking to Peter with a kind of quiet knowing as though he could tell Peter was mere seconds from a full-fledged breakdown.

“Can I just get a second?” Peter asked without looking to Wade.

“Yeah… okay, right. Fuck off now Wade. I get it. Just… call if you need help. You tear your stitches open and my ass is going to have to patch you up and it won’t be pretty.” Peter mustered up a forced smile.

“I think I can manage. If not I’ll just scream once if I mess up my stitches and twice if the room is being invaded by guys with guns.”

“For anything else just scream in Morse code. Shot screams are dots, long screams are dashes.” Wade spoke smiling faintly as he left Peter, shutting the door behind him.

He had a nice smile when it was genuine. His teeth were straight and his lips were full. The more Peter looked at him the more he realised that without the scars he would have been what people would conventionally call handsome. He was funny and got Peter’s sense of humour which was a true rarity.

When Peter was left alone in the room the weight of the world began to rest squarely on his shoulders. He took his time sorting through each shirt, not caring which one he chose but rather needing time for everything to settle. Nothing in the past few days felt real.

Peter was struggling to slip into an oversized burgundy sweater when the reality of his situation hit him. He sunk to the floor half in, half out of the sweater, pulling his knees to his chest. He rested his spine against the wooden drawers trying to anchor himself to something. He was in a strange place with a stranger. He had lost his apartment and all his things. He had also likely lost his job. If his aunt had seen the news and recognised the building she would be worried sick.

Peter reminded himself to breathe and look at things rationally. The world ended all the time. The world as he knew it had ended when his parents died, when Uncle Ben died, when Gwen died, when Mary Jane left him. It had ended a hundred times in between and still, Peter would wake up the next morning and keep going.

He needed to take his mind off the blind panic rising in his chest. He tried to name moons: Phobos, Deimos, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and so on. He shut his eyes and tried to imagine the breath flowing in and out of his lungs. He pictured the oxygenation of his blood and remembered how the body was constantly fighting for equilibrium.

In his cells, sodium and potassium were struggling to find a balance. Life could be like cells, momentarily thrown off kilter before finding a way back to an equilibrium. Peter had to try and believe this and shut down his emotionality. He needed to think of things clinically. It was the only way he wouldn’t have a full-blown breakdown.

As Peter breathed he noticed the room’s smell was a mixture of musk and spice. The sleeves of the sweater, however, smelled of something inhuman, not synthetic like deodorant but instead a mixture of smoke and sulphur. The same odd mix of smells had covered the bedsheets he had woken up in.

There was the wrap of knuckles to the tune of ‘I can’t help myself’. Before Peter had the chance to pull himself together Wade re-entered the room holding two crudely drawn crayon sketches.

“I was just checking to make sure you hadn’t thrown up on my carpet again. Also, I need help out here. You had some sketches in your apartment, right? The kid wanted me to draw one of the superheroes from my comic book and I fucked it up so badly I bet you can’t even tell which ones-,” His eyes finally seemed to catch up to his mouth. He looked down to where Peter was sitting on the floor and sighed.

“What’s Morse code for ‘breakdown’ again?” Peter asked with a half-hearted laugh, trying to shrug himself into the sweater before cringing.

“One really long yell should do it,” Wade mused sitting down beside him and tentatively helping his bad arm through the sleeve. 

He reached out brushing Peter’s hair back from his eyes. It had the look it did most mornings, a wild mess of waves sticking outwards in random directions. Peter adjusted his glasses and took one last long breath.

“Which ones yours and which ones the kids?” Wade nudged Peter’s knee and let out an exasperated groan.

“They’re both mine dick, I told you I need help.”

Peter chuckled faintly and pulled himself to his feet.

“Alright then, let’s go. I’ll get you to draw something easy first, like a circle.”


	5. An Imperfect Circle

Wade Wilson liked soul music and was incapable of drawing a circle. He had the same smile, whether crudely sketching in crayon or killing a man. He could hold a tune and knew all the words to every Sam Cooke record. Peter didn’t know what to do with this information. The silent child seemed just as amused as Peter while they both watched Wade. The larger man sat hunched over himself, brows furrowed and tongue half hanging out of his mouth while struggling to follow Peter’s instructions.

“How’s this one?” Wade huffed showing Peter his latest attempt at a superhero sketch.

“Why is he holding baguettes?” Peter pulled the paper closer to inspect it, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose while the child drew crooked skyscrapers.

“They’re katana, man,” Wade groaned taking back the drawing, flipping it over and starting again.

“Oh, right I see it now,” Peter’s voice sounded the opposite of convinced.

“Right- I see now,” Wade echoed back a pitch higher with a wrinkled nose.

Peter gave Wade’s foot a rough shove and asked the child what he wanted him to draw next. For a while, the child’s face crumpled in concentration. He tapped a comic book twice then pointed towards a terrarium balanced on top of an old radio.

Within the terrarium, a large tarantula crept up and down a strategically placed stick. The synthetic light illuminated strands of thin web lacing like a dress hem around the bottom of the terrarium. Peter’s heart did a little leap as most people’s hearts did when confronted with something their primal instincts told them was dangerous.

“Oh, a spider?” Peter’s voice rose an octave and cracked.

The child shook his head, tapping the comic book again. Peter couldn’t help but feel he was playing an ornate game of charades.

“A superhero?” This earned another shake of the head.

“A spider superhero?” The child nodded, correct.

“Alright.”

Wade was busy perfecting his katana while Peter worked on sketching an outline. The child would quietly chip in by handing Peter what he believed to be the ‘right’ colours. Red and blueish-grey, that seemed right enough. Peter could work with that.

“Why do you even have a spider anyway? It’s not exactly a good cuddle buddy.”

 “Shelob? Pretty little lady wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well- actually she does eat flies.” Wade looked up, shooting Peter his amused and genuine smile. It was the same smile that crossed his face when he cracked a man’s skull on Peter’s sink.

“Shelob? Like Lord of the Rings? You called me a nerd.” Wade’s smile broadened, brilliant if not manic.

“You got the reference. No one gets my references. Did you hear that the Beatles brought the rights to the film? They’re going to try and star in the movie. Personally, I hope Paul McCartney plays Golem because he’s not as hot as he thinks he is.”

Peter stifled a laugh, surprised at where the conversation had gone.

“Yeah and let Ringo be Legolas,” Peter smirked trying to imagine it.

Wade snorted and began attempting to draw what Peter assumed was Ringo Star with elf ears and a silver wig. It was a crude simulacrum but Peter still liked it. There was a jilted charm to it. The child moved closer to Peter, tapping the paper as though asking him to continue. Peter laughed softly.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there.”

“I stole Shelob from my old therapist. He specialized in exposure therapy. Which is

‘smart talk’ for scaring the shit out of you until you aren’t afraid anymore.”

Peter paused drawing for a moment, trying to figure out the costume and pose. He tweaked bits and pieces as he went along, unsure as to how to get the eyes right. In the end, he settled for something resembling a lucha libre mask though he filled the slits of the eyes with plastic and chrome covers. Obviously, a hero would need to cover their eyes. Peter thought it was logical. He wasn’t sure someone could recognize him by eyes alone. His eyes were nothing special, a mix of brown and hazel. They were wide, always giving him a surprised and child-like quality.

“You were afraid of spiders?” Peter asked, debating what powers the hero in question should have. Spider’s webs were supposedly very strong. Maybe Peter could work with that.

“No way I could be afraid of them. They’re crawling all over the shit holes I’ve stayed in. It’s just- whatever. I didn’t like the way the spider was just there to be prodded. There’s gotta be more to life than people screaming when they look at you. So now she’s in early retirement. Sometimes she likes to hang out in my Barbie dream house and drive my Pontiac GTO model car. She loves the feeling of the wind in her hairy legs.”

Peter stifled a laugh at the thought and shook his head. After that lovely mental image, he decided his own hero would not have the typical spider legs. His suit design, however, could use some webs.

The boy edged himself closer to Peter, peeking around him to get a better look at the drawing. He continued to give silent suggestions, pushing Peter to draw more, eyes a blaze of curiosity. A patchwork story formed on the backs of poorly kept notepaper and scattered across Wade’s apartment floor. There was a boy, not quite a man, who was both painfully normal and not. It involved spaceships, astronauts and genetically altered spiders.

 Slowly but surely the day began to slip away from the odd trio. The sun rose and set in the sky behind closed curtains. Peter’s shoulder began to throb like a misplaced heartbeat while Wade had taken to pacing. The boy was drifting in and out of sleep. His head was placed in Peter’s lap. Weasel still hadn’t come to pick him up.  

Under his breath Wade huffed out his displeasure with the situation both cursing softly, consoling himself and aggravating his worries in the same mouthful. Part of Peter felt uneasy while the other recognised Wade’s war was within himself.

“Do you always do that- talk to yourself, I mean?” Peter asked.

Wade stopped pacing, silencing his internal tennis match. Despite being in his own home and away from prying eyes, save for Peter, he was covered head to toe. He wore a baggy chestnut overcoat and red turtleneck paired with plaid trousers. Even his hands were gloved. Maybe if he had taken the gloves off he would be able to draw a circle.

Peter struggled to believe that there were people in the world who couldn’t draw it. A simple circle was out of Wade’s artistic repertoire. Though, Peter did suppose the world wasn’t a perfect circle. In simplistic terms, the actual topography of the earth was a rough and uneven sphere. Peter had a strange sense of discomfort knowing that even the earth had been dolled up in the papers and textbook pages.

He liked the world the way it was, rough and real. The world wasn’t the beautiful kind of store brought apple, ruby red and rotting. It was the bumped and bruised fruit that fell from home grown apple trees. It looked uglier than it was. That’s how Peter saw the world. In a strange way, Peter liked how Wade drew circles.

“Do you always do that- the thousand-yard stare?” Wade answered his question with a question.

Peter couldn’t hold back the urge to roll his eyes. Now that they were alone, it was time to find out who he was trusting, who both saved and destroyed his life. Wade wasn’t going to give it to him easily.  

“Where do you go when you zone out like that? Are you planning world domination? Having a vivid X-rated daydream about Legolas Ringo Star?” If nothing else Peter had managed to get Wade out of his own head. He had stopped pacing and moved to sit down beside Peter on the floor in front of the television, picking up a few of the sketches Peter had done and examining them with a gloved hand.

“I think you’re projecting, I’m more of a Richard Beymer kind of guy.” It was a joke. Wade raised his brow like it wasn’t. It was.

Peter reached forward turning on the television, wanting to get a small glimpse of the outside world. The news was similar to when Peter had watched it last, the names were different but the incidences were the same, because of this the pang of urgency in Peter’s chest swelled.  He wondered if everyone else felt the same, that each day the world wasn’t getting better it was falling further apart. Maybe his life would be less stressful if he was born before the television, before he could see what was going on in the far reaches of the world the same day it happened. Ignorance might be bliss but it wouldn’t fix a thing.

“You said you were in Vietnam. What was it like?”

Wade wasn’t looking at the television, he was instead scribbling a crudely drawn moustache on one of Peter’s drawings.

“Hot, like unbelievably hot. It’s like walking through a sauna in a sweater, in July. I would have stripped off but the locals had enough eye-sores, plus Wade Jr has gotten caught in the trigger guard of my gun one too many times for my liking.”

“Isn’t one time too many?” Wade shot Peter a sly smirk and shrugged.

Peter looked to the images on the television again, eyes momentarily fixated on the screen. War also didn’t look like it did in the pages of history books. Beside him, Wade had managed to look up for a second.

“It’s prettier on T.V. It’s harder to see all the blood and the flies.”

Peter tried to apply the horrors he had seen several nights before to a grander scale. He tried to imagine a country in the constant state of this bloody chaos. He imagined Wade there and wondered if he had been smiling in the warzone, as he had been in Peter’s apartment or gazing with the look of conflicted confusion that now covered his face.

“How long ago were you there?” Peter asked feeling the boy still asleep in his lap begin to stir.

“Not long enough ago that I want to talk about it,” Wade mused.

He stood gathering Peter’s drawings. Wade placed them in the top drawer of his cabinet beneath Shelob’s terrarium. He then moved the pedestal fan in the corner of the room closer to Peter and the sleeping boy.

“Why were you there?” Peter pressed.

“War, espionage, doing top-secret government dirty work- the usual.” Wade had returned to pacing.

“What kind of dirty work?”

“You know for a newspaper reporter you sure are bad at trying to interview a person,” Wade jeered turning Peter’s blood icy.

He hadn’t mentioned anything about being a newspaper reporter and he didn’t think anything in his apartment would give that much away. Any clippings of articles he had written were stored in desk draws away from prying eyes, even in a tussle Wade shouldn’t have been able to pick up the minuscule details.

“Don’t look at me like that doe. I did some digging while you were asleep. Can’t be too careful.”

“How much digging?”

Peter’s voice was a clipped copy of itself, something familiar but strange in his ears. The ice in his veins had been melted, now replaced by molten lava. Fury blazed beneath the surface of his skin, tying itself around his bones. Wade didn’t seem to notice.

“Your name’s Peter _Benjamin_ Parker. Born in Queens to a Richard and Mary Parker but you were raised by your aunt and uncle. Graduated top of your class at Midtown High School, Forest Hill, Queens. Friends in high places, never left the state, no criminal record- blah, blah, tedious backstory, blah. I stopped reading after that- attention span of a- something with a short attention span.”

The hands at Peter’s side balled into tight fists. The rooms seemed to tilt. In his mouth the metallic taste of blood mixed with the acidic taste of bile. He felt stripped bare and vulnerable. It was the odd kind of venerable, similar to the feeling of stumbling about in nothing but shoes. It was a step beyond nudity, a strange vulnerability that came with the awareness of having one inessential part covered.

“How did you get those scars?” Peter was speaking before he had the chance to think. It was cruel, a low blow to say the least but he was a wild animal backed into a corner. He was lashing out.

Wade stood silent. His arms folded across his body placing a subconscious barrier between the two. Peter quietly seethed. A part of him wanted to apologise while the other wanted to push further.

Both men were stubborn, neither willing to give in to the other. Wade went back to pacing. Peter removed himself from beneath the child and stood. He took several steps towards the door, waiting for Wade to call his bluff. He could leave whenever he wanted. Those were the other man’s words but upon realising the door was shut using several locks and deadbolts it began to feel as though that had been a comforting lie.

“Let me out,” Peter’s voice was curt and sharp in his own ears. Wade kept pacing.

“Where’re you gonna go?” He didn’t look to Peter when he spoke.

“Home.”

“Home like the crime scene?” Wade was trying to push Peter’s buttons.

“Home like a place where I can trust who I’m staying with.”  Peter could guess how to push Wade’s back.

Wade stopped pacing, shoving his hand into the back pocket of his coat and pulling out a set of keys. He tossed them at Peter, aiming just shy of his bad shoulder. Peter didn’t attempt to catch it. He watched it fly across the room and skid beneath Wade’s cabinet. If Peter had nothing, he still had his dignity.

“Bye, bye, Petey Pie. Nice not knowing ya.”

Peter trailed after the key bending down, holding back a groan as pain shot through his frame. He held his doubled over position, using the hand on his good side to stabilise himself.

“Asshole,” Peter breathed through gritted teeth.

It was then that Wade Wilson surprised Peter. He crossed the room awkwardly attempting to help Peter, trying to move past him to retrieve the keys. If nothing else Peter Parker could be stubborn when he needed to be, pushing Wade’s helping hand away.

“I can get it,” Peter grumbled.

 He pressed his forehead and bad shoulder against the cabinet. His good hand fished about in the dark for the keys. He could hear the assorted action figures and decaying potted plants atop of it shake as he reached further in.

“I was just trying to help,” Wade pointed out.

“You wouldn’t need to help if you hadn’t done it in the first place.” Peter’s fingers finally clasped around the set of keys.

Peter stood, shoving the keys into Wade’s hand never making eye contact. There was part of him that looked momentarily rejected. Peter tried not to feel bad about this. He was doing what any logical person would have done from the beginning. He was removing himself from whatever situation he had gotten himself into. Despite this, he had an odd feeling that the smart choice and the right choice, in this situation, were two separate entities.

Wade took his time unlocking each deadbolt and key as if waiting for Peter to tell him to stop. He didn’t, it seemed like the only smart decision he had made in the time they had known each other. He let his eyes drift to the boy, still asleep on the floor in front of the television. Peter was leaving because he couldn’t trust Wade, not logically. He didn’t know a thing about him and it didn’t seem like he was going to be willing to divulge anything beyond vague one-liners alluding to some serious past traumas.

Peter also had to acknowledge that in doing what was best for him he was putting the kid in a risky situation. He knew that if worst came to worst, there wouldn’t be much he could do.  Behind his eyelids, Peter saw the skull of a man, gaping like a hollowed-out melon, cracked against his bathroom sink. That man had worked for the government or some shady underground crime mob- the details of which were still a mystery to Peter. The long and short of it was that whatever that man had been, he had been more capable than Peter. Still, it wasn’t in his character to do nothing.

Peter’s quiet contemplation was broken by the crackle of a two-way radio sputtering to life beneath Shelob’s terrarium. No voice spoke. Instead, there was a series of high-pitched squeals varying in length and speed. Wade’s finger rhythmically tapped against his own thigh, brow furrowed in concentration. He was working out something. The furrows grew deeper as the cryptic message continued before cutting out entirely.

“What was that?” Peter breathed as silence fell over the room.

“Weasel will be here in an hour or so. He was being followed but he lost them.”

Peter weighed up his options. He could stay for another hour, just enough to make sure the silent child was safe. After that, he could leave. After that, Peter didn’t know. He would work something out. Hypothesis, the kid would be safe after Weasel picked him up. There was little to no evidence to suggest this. Wade had said he would be safe. Peter was leaving because he couldn’t trust Wade. Peter was also letting Weasel take the child because he trusted what Wade had said to be true. People’s minds were illogical and contradictory.

Part of Peter trusted Wade. Part of Peter didn’t. The null hypothesis, Wade couldn’t be trusted. Therefore, he should leave and probably take the kid with him. The evidence overwhelmingly pointed in this direction. Peter didn’t know a thing about Wade beside the fact he was a killer, a thief and a slew of other choice adjectives.

The alternative hypothesis, Wade could be trusted. Therefore, he shouldn’t leave and the kid would be fine. The evidence for this was next to non-existent but Peter a had six sense for people. As he aged he had developed an intuition, he could tell when someone was a crook or a threat just by being in their proximity. Peter’s intuition told him he could trust Wade. Maybe he needed more data.

The door was open, both Wade and Peter stood neither looking directly at each other. Peter took a step closer to the door before he shut it. Wade didn’t make a move to lock it. He caught Peter’s gaze for a moment then shied away from it, looking to the spider lacing strings around the floor of her home.

“I’ll stay until the kid leaves,” Peter spoke at the same time Wade muttered,

“Sorry about your shoulder.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. The second heartbeat that was Peter’s bullet wound began to quicken. He touched the wound tentatively, pulling down his shirt to expose the gauze plaster. It was stained with blood and puss. It was not enough to suggest the stitches had been torn but did indicate he needed to change the dressing.

“I’ll fix it,” Wade spoke, grabbing the sleeve of Peter’s shirt on his good side and dragging him towards the bathroom.

Peter found himself perched on the edge of a bathtub mindlessly looking at the grey grit between the off-white bathroom tiles. Wade gathered supplies from the medicine cabinet, humming under his breath and gnawing at his bottom lip.

“My middle name is Winston,” Wade spoke without looking up. Peter didn’t look at him.

“I’m Canadian. I ran away from home before I could finish high school. I’ve lived everywhere but mostly nowhere. I prefer brunettes to blondes. Nothing compares to soul music. My favourite Beatle is the one no one ever remembers. I have a kid, a girl. Her name is Eleanor but everyone calls her Ellie because what kind of old lady name is Eleanor? I didn’t pick it. Don’t blame me,” Wade still wasn’t looking at Peter as he spoke, preoccupied with the first aid supplies in his gloved hands.

“I had a fiancé once. It didn’t end well. It was mostly my fault. Most good things in my life don’t end well. Most of the time it’s my fault. There, now you know more about me than most of the people I know, happy?”  Wade’s words came out rushed with a slight edge of pain, telling Peter that he was speaking the truth.

Peter’s eyes had moved to Wade, or just shy of him. He took in the information without saying a word watching as Wade sat down in front of him and began removing the dirty plaster.

“Just because you tell me about your past doesn’t mean I’m just going to forgive you for digging into mine.”

“I know.”

“You chose to tell me, I didn’t.” Peter’s voice strained, giving away more of his emotions than he had intended.

Wade nods, a furrow etching between his brows as he struggled to remove the backing plastic from the new gauze with his gloved hand. It takes him several seconds to decide to remove it. His hands were a desert landscape of red scars and uneven topography.

“And just because you’re helping fix my shoulder doesn’t mean I forgive you for being a dick earlier.” A smile twitched over Wade’s face.

“I know.”

He cleaned the wound and spread the gauze over Peter’s shoulder, finding it far easier without the gloves. He tried his best to avoid touching Peter’s exposed skin. It was borderline ridiculous. Peter surprised Wade by touching the back of his hand. His skin was rough to the touch but not unpleasant. It simply was.

“What’re you doing kid? You’re definitely giving off mixed signals.” Peter removed his hand at seeing how visibly uncomfortable the other man had become.

“Showing you I won’t burst into flames if you touch me.”

“Oh,” Wade breathed rubbing the back of his hand. Peter watched as his cheeks turned rosy, maybe it was a trick of the light.

“You should lay down for a bit doe, I’ll leave the door open so you know I’m not going to kill the kid and sell his organs on the black market. Getting shot takes a lot out of you, trust me I know.”

Wade turned his back on Peter to wash his hands or to hide the blush spreading over his cheeks. Peter heard him groan for someone to ‘shut up’, under his breath. Peter was about to reject the offer but upon standing felt his feet become shaky. Lying down for a second couldn’t hurt.

“I’ll forgive you a little quicker if you stop calling me that it’s… weird.” Peter didn’t think that weird was the right word for it. The name itself wasn’t. Instead, it was how the name made him feel, weird.

He was used to nicknames, Mary Jane called him ‘Tiger’ more than she called him Peter but that name was wrapped in different connotations. What was so weird about it was how similar the two names made him feel. He pushed these thoughts aside, not knowing how to deal with them.

“But you will forgive me?” Wade shot him a cheeky grin. Peter stood and pushed the other man’s shoulder.

Hypothesis, Peter’s own feelings towards Wade shouldn’t be trusted. The evidence, a strange bubbling sensation in the pit of his stomach that urged him to stay despite his better judgment.

“Forgiveness takes time and trust. Trust takes even more time than forgiveness.”

“I thought you were leaving once the boy was gone,” There was a smirk to Wade’s voice like he knew Peter’s response before he could say it.

“I’m thinking about it. I’m going to lie down.”

Peter pushed past Wade and into the bedroom, lying down on top of the covers. He watched as Wade entered the main room, pulling a cushion from the couch and placing it beneath the child’s head. He also slipped off his chestnut overcoat, draping it over his frame like a blanket.

Peter had a theory that Wade Wilson wasn’t a bad person but he also wasn’t a good one. He might not forgive the older man or trust him but some part of Peter had to admit, he might be fond of him.  


	6. Time in a Black hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains depictions or descriptions of sensitive topics, make sure to read the tags if you are worried this will affect you.

General relativity was a funny thing. Time isn’t always the way it is experienced. Einstein proposed that certain astrophysical objects acted as gravity wells with pulls so strong they could make time and light non-existent. It is a giant gaping hole in the fabric of reality where both time and light stopped existing.

In the year 1965, nothing has yet been found to prove this theory or what would cause a giant hole of non-existence to rip the fabric of the universe in two. There were many interesting theories but so far, they were lacking concrete evidence. Two years prior Peter had read of the discovery of a thing called ‘quasars’, giant momentary explosions of light and radiation. This discovery seemed like a precursor to something. Maybe in the time he had been sleeping someone had discovered evidence for this phenomenon. For all Peter knew he had fallen into one as he awoke in near-blackness with no sense of time or space.

Peter had fallen asleep and it was late into the night when he awoke. He knew this in the same way as he had known it was morning the previous day. With the curtains drawn Peter didn’t have much to go on, but it had been darker than when he had gone to sleep. Now he squinted through deep blue-grey darkness wondering what had caused him to wake up and how much time had passed. Without clocks or light time might as well not exist.

His body still felt sore and weary, like whatever force fuelled the human body had been drained from him and he was running off fumes alone. Getting shot wasn’t something Peter had ever planned for, though neither was being in hiding in a strange apartment with an even stranger man. Life always had a way of surprising Peter. His aunt had coined the phrase ‘Parker Luck’ after the long streak of bad luck that followed the Parker family. The previous days were a perfect example of Parker Luck in motion.

If Peter were to hazard a guess, he would say he had been asleep for several hours. He felt an acute awareness that something outside his body had woken him. He wasn’t sure what. Wade’s apartment had thick walls, unlike Peter’s Chinatown apartment. He couldn’t hear people talking or the squeak of a box spring mattress several doors over. For all Peter knew they might be the only people left in the building. The walls beyond the ones he saw could house abandoned office spaces or a den for squatters. The walls could house working-class families, lonely bachelors or new-money socialites. Wade had said his safe house was in Hell’s Kitchen but that could have been a misdirect. Like the room he now resided in, Peter was in the dark.

He pulled himself out of bed, finding it harder than he had anticipated. He was under the bedsheets despite recalling falling asleep on top of them. His logical side knew that a bullet wound would take more than a handful of days to heal but he was always more hopeful than logical. He put on his glasses and staggered to the open doorway. There was a halo of light illuminating the door Peter had thought to be a broom closet. From the room, Peter heard the jittering of a radio. It tuned in and out of different frequencies before settling on a station that Peter guessed was a police scanner or private frequency. Two or more static voices talked, the wall between Peter and the source muffled their conversation.

He took a step closer, the floor letting out a groan as he did so. Three things happened at once. The radio cut off, filling the room with silence. This silence was followed by a quiet curse and the hefty thud of heavy boots on loose floorboards. The door to what Peter could now confirm was a closet, swung open. Wade stood, his scarred skin ruddy and pale eyes weary. Between his lips was a half-smoked cigarette. Peter recalled the smell of smoke on the sleeve of the sweater he now wore and the bedsheets he had slept in. 

For a fraction of a second, Peter caught a glimpse of the file Wade had taken from his apartment building. The contents of which were strewn out haphazardly across the floor of the small room. Peter didn’t have enough time to read it before the door shut. Both Peter and Wade were left in the dark, illuminated only by the halo of light.

“You still set on leaving two-bit Buddy Holly?” Wade asked his tone trying to appear uninterested.

Peter hadn’t thought about it. Since he had awoken his mind had been set on the present moment. He hadn’t thought about his promise to leave as soon as the boy was gone. That decision was made on a clearer mind.  Now Peter was unsure. The world outside that room was a mystery to him but it didn’t have to be. He was free to leave. So why wasn’t he already gone?

“Did Weasel pick up the kid?” Something about their short time together told Peter that Wade wanted him to react to his teasing, so he didn’t. However, he did formulate a snarky remark to use on a possible later date.

“An hour or so ago. Don’t worry Boy-Wonder, you’re free to go without a guilty conscience.”

“I was sleeping for at least a few hours and the best insults you could come up with were _Boy-Wonder_ and _Two-Bit Buddy Holly?_ ” Despite Peter’s better judgment, there was a smile on his lips and an urge to join in the name-calling.

“One man’s name calling is another man’s term of endearment.”

Wade took a step closer. The dull glow of his cigarette butt gravitated towards Peter’s direction. They were two feet apart. Peter felt a pulling sensation like gravity, reasoning the pull should be from his fist to Wade’s jaw for putting him in this situation.

“How’s the shoulder?” Wade continued, the cigarette bobbing up and down as he gestured.

Wade talked with his hands as though he didn’t know what else to do with them. In their time together Peter had realised Wade was a pendulum often swinging from one extreme to the other. He was either stiff and unmoving or wild and fidgety. There was no in between.

“Fine, how’re the files?” Wade swung from fidgety to stiff.

“Peachy Petey,” His voice radiated sarcasm.

“Oh yeah. It looked so peachy from where I was standing, Red.” Peter observed referring to the overwhelming amount of red both in Wade’s wardrobe and on his person.

“I thought you were leaving,” Wade shot back, snuffing out his cigarette on the doorframe, apartment deposit be dammed.

“I thought you didn’t want me to go.” In the now darkness, Peter heard Wade shift from one foot to the next. He did the same.  

“I thought you were a little hotter and a little less nosy.”

When Wade called him that, Peter’s stomach jolted. It was as though he had taken a train to Coney Island and hopped on the Cyclone. He hadn’t eaten for a while, maybe he was hungry. At the thought of Coney Island, his body craved street food.

“Good lighting and trauma bonding can make you think that. I thought you were taller.” Peter could also be snarky when he wanted to be.

“Taller? Of all the things you could say about my looks you call me short?” Wade’s voice had risen an octave.

Peter could hardly see Wade but he could tell he was getting under the other man’s skin in a way he would struggle to explain. He couldn’t recall the last time he had a conversation like this one. It was a verbal chess match of quips. He liked it. 

“Your all show and no go, my friend,” Peter added feeling himself gravitate closer to Wade.

“You wound me, kid. You’re something else, Peter Parker. It would be a shame to see you go.”

That’s right. Peter was meant to be going. He should leave. He should have already left but he hadn’t and somewhere deep down he realised he wasn’t going to leave.

“Maybe I’ll stay for the food and the roof and put up with the company.”

“Does that mean I got you, babe?” Peter swore Wade sounded excited.

“That means I’ve weighed up my options and this is statistically the smartest option. Don’t flatter yourself, Wade.” But it was too late, Wade had already let it get to his head.

“You like me,” Wade strode past Peter to finally switch the lights on revealing his shit-eating grin.

“I don’t,” Peter assured crossing his arms over his chest feeling a slight twinge of pain.

It was then that Wade stifled a yawn and Peter remembered the time. It must be late. Wade looked like he hadn’t had a good sleep in at least a handful of days. Peter also remembered it was a one bedroom apartment. Oh.

“You can sleep in the bed if you want. I mean it’s your bed but…” Wade held up a hand and rolled his eyes.

“No worries doll-face beds are out of season anyway. I’m still trying to work out what the fuck I’ve stolen.” Just when Peter thought Wade couldn’t get any more confusing.

“You don’t know what is in the top-secret files you stole?” Peter couldn’t hold back his judging tone of voice.

“I have a general idea… Don’t give me that look they’re encrypted. I don’t do encrypted. Half of the stuff is typewriter gibberish and the other stuff might as well be Chinese- actually, fuck that. I could probably work it out if it were in Chinese. I need to know what the fuck I have so I don’t get short-changed when I try to sell it.”  

Of course, Wade was going to sell it. Peter thought about the files for a moment, retreating into himself to recall what knowledge he did have of encoding. He recalled writing a history paper in high school on an Enigma machine, even going as far as to make a working model in his spare time. Peter liked to tinker when possible. It had driven his uncle and aunt insane as from a young age he had gotten into the habit of taking apart telephones, typewriters and anything with insulated wires or batteries.

An Enigma machine was the culmination of everything Peter liked to tinker with. The machine looked like a typewriter with spinning rotors where each key spat out a different letter to the one intended, following a path not unlike a circuit. If Peter typed ‘A’ the machine might spit out a ‘D’. The rotors were often twisting and changing, spitting out a different combination of possible letters with every key press. The next time the letter ‘A’ was typed it might correspond to a ‘G’. That’s what made these things so hard to break. If the files were that complex Wade was right, they would be next to impossible to crack.  Peter liked the idea of attempting impossible things.

“I could take a look at it,” Peter offered fuelled by both curiosity and boredom.

“So if you get captured by Masters’ goon patrol you can actually have information to spill, no thanks, kid. Bad plan.” A deep furrow appeared between Wade’s brows. Peter was about to argue but Wade cut him off.

“Not going to happen. Don’t give me the puppy dog eyes. I can’t handle the puppy dog eyes. Look, I got you gifts. Well, I got Weasel to get you gifts. You know, to say ‘I’m sorry for wrecking stuff, uprooting your life and forcing you into hiding’. It felt like the right thing to do. Also, I got Weasel to bring over some clothes that might actually fit you.”

Peter scoffed knowing Wade was trying to make him drop the subject. He wasn’t going to, but he was interested. He allowed himself to get momentarily side-tracked. It wasn’t as though he would be able to go anywhere quickly. He had a feeling that his indeterminate time in hiding with Wade would end later rather than sooner unless he decided to bite the bullet and leave. The latter option could lead to both him and his loved ones being put in danger by some seriously shady creeps, so it looked as though Peter had time on his hands.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What did you get me?” He tried to keep his tone uninterested but Wade saw through him.

Wade guided Peter into the main area, switching more lights on as he went. Peter plonked down on the sofa and raised a brow as Wade motioned for him to hold out his hands and shut his eyes. Peter held out his hands but kept his eyes open.

“I definitely don’t trust you enough to do that.”

“Fucking spoilsport,” Wade sighed, retrieving the small haul of what were Peter’s ‘gifts’ from one of the draws beneath Shelob. The spider was nowhere in sight which made the back of Peter’s neck itch.

In his outstretched hands, Wade placed a sketchbook, a variety of art supplies and a camera. It took Peter a second to register that Wade had done something genuinely nice for him. He supposed Wade was right, he owed Peter for uprooting his life. This small gesture didn’t begin to even the playing field of good to bad things he had seen Wade do but it did soften something inside him.

“I did it for selfish reasons really, I just wanted more Spider-man comics in something other than Crayon,” Wade remarked burying Peter’s thought immediately.  

“Spider-man? That’s original. What’s your guy’s name? Baguette-man? Here I was thinking you were trying to take responsibility for your actions.”

“And here I was thinking I could get you something nice without you being snarky,” Wade jeered as Peter inspected the camera and inks he was given.

Wade had done a pretty good job all things considered. The camera was new and top of the range as were the pencils and inking equipment. Whatever Wade was doing for a living was paying well.

“It’s a good thing you’re pretty or I might get offended,” Wade added sitting down beside Peter, leaving a couple of inches between the two of them.

He needed to stop doing that. Whatever the hell, _that_ was.

Peter took the art supplies and looked them over, pulling out a pencil and the sketchbook. He tried them out, mindlessly sketching the frame of a man as Wade sat beside him quietly watching.

“Alright, Petey. I’m going to head back to tearing my hair out trying to work out these fucking files,” Wade spoke reaching over to tussle his hair and stood.

“You need hair to tear it out,” Peter joked not looking up a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“I still have some eyebrows left smartass,” Wade remarked wiggling his brows suggestively.

“You could just let me look at it.”

Wade sighed deeply as though he had hoped the conversation would have ended by the momentary distraction he had supplied. When it didn’t he just shook his head and moved to retreat back into his make-shift study.

“Not going to happen. I’m not even going to look at you. I know you’re doing the eyes. It can’t break me if I can’t see ’em.”

Peter slumped down in the sofa continuing to sketch. His mind formed muscles over the skeleton. He wasn’t giving up, he was just biding time.

It took two fully drawn and inked pages for Peter to hear the shuffling of Wade’s feet, irritated sighs and groans fall silent. That was what he had been waiting for. Wade was stubborn trying to keep Peter out of whatever was going on. He was already involved now. There was no possible way of turning back. In for a penny, in for a pound. He might as well know what had caused his life to fall into chaos.

Peter moved slowly and deliberately, each step light and quiet. He placed his pencil behind his ear and made room for the two inked pieces beside Shelob and an assortment of action figures. He then made his way towards the closet. As he suspected, there was no lock on the door. With a quiet turn of the handle, Peter was in.

The room was dim, illuminated by a single hanging bulb. The floor was littered with sheets of paper, both handwritten and typed. There were some hand-drawn images buried amongst the clutter. Peter couldn’t work out if they were maps, formulas or circuits. Amongst the papers Wade lay, his large body curled into itself, his brows pulling into a deep furrow. His hand twitched slightly as though attempting to grab something that wasn’t there.

Peter grabbed one of the handwritten papers nearest to Wade and began to scan the nonsensical words for a pattern. The letter ‘Q’ appeared oddly frequently. Peter took the pencil from behind his ear and scribbled down an ‘E’ above it. Statistically speaking ‘E’ was the most common letter in the English language. This part of the document appeared to be encoded in a Caesar cypher, which was child’s play really.

A Caesar cypher was merely the shifting of letters. If a cypher was shifted by 3 that would mean that ‘A’ became ‘D’. This code was shifted by 12 causing the letter ‘E’ to become ‘Q’. From there all Peter had to do was work backwards. It took him less than half an hour to decode the first page. It appeared that the handwritten notes were all done by slightly differing shifts of a Caesar cypher. The typed notes weren’t going to be so easy.

After decoding the first page Peter tried to make sense of it all. It seemed more like a journal and less like valuable military grade information. It talked about a special force unit, a ‘project X’, something about locations across varying countries. It was then that Wade began to stir. He talked in his sleep, which didn’t surprise Peter as he seemed to rarely be quiet when awake.

Little of his conversation made sense. It was mostly mumbled under his breath with the furrow in his brow growing deeper, his hands now balling into tight fists, nails digging into his scarred palms. Peter dropped the paper and sighed reaching over to touch the back of Wade’s hand. Shit. He hated being such a softy.

“You’re okay,” He breathed out.

“Just a nightmare.”

Peter wondered if Wade got these often. It wouldn’t surprise him. Peter had seen more death and chaos in his time with Wade than he had in his whole life before him. That much death could change a person. Peter wasn’t surprised he didn’t like to sleep.

Peter tried to loosen Wade’s closed fists when his eyes sprung open. Wade looked without seeing, his eyes were open but his mind seemed thousands of miles away, buried deep within himself. A quasar of emotions shot through his body: anger, fear and panic. All of it still seemed distant as though Peter were watching an animal behind thick plates of glass.  

Wade sprung forward shoving Peter to the floor. A sickening crack filled his ears as he felt the back of his head make contact with the opposite wall of the small room. Peter didn’t know how to recount what came next. Events jumbled in his mind. It ended with Wade grabbing his wrists and pinning them behind his head. Peter’s shoulder screamed in protest. Shit.

Peter tried to kick out at the larger man, fear momentarily swallowing his senses. There was a ringing in his ears brought on by pain and panic. His eyes searched frantically for something, anything that might help him. He felt himself pawing at papers, trying to grab the doorframe and pull himself from under Wade’s grip. Nothing was working but Wade had stopped fighting. He was still pinning Peter down. Both arms were locked behind his head while Wade’s knee was embedded in his spleen. It took everything within Peter to calm himself down.

Peter shut his eyes and counted his breaths, trying to name moons: Phobos, Deimos, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and so on. He tried to imagine the breath flowing in and out of his lungs. He pictured the oxygenation of his blood and remembered how the body was constantly fighting for equilibrium. He took one deep breath and spoke.

“Wade.” Peter hated how much his voice shook.

“It’s Peter, you’ve gotta let go. It’s Peter.”

At that moment, Wade wasn’t with him. He was somewhere deep inside his head. Maybe he was in Vietnam or on one of the jobs he wouldn’t speak to Peter about. Either way, Peter knew this wasn’t about him. Yes- he was in danger but fighting back didn’t seem to be the solution. He had to be logical, calculated.

“Okay buddy, I’m just going to talk to you. Like you talked to me remember when Logan was stitching me up and you sat with me and talked to me?”

Wade didn’t seem to react, but he was not trying to fight Peter, simply holding him down.

“Right, well um… I started drawing those Spider-man comics you were talking about. I’m still not sure about that name, by the way. I’m doing it for the kid though- not for you, okay? But I might include Baguette-man if you ask nicely.” The ringing in Peter’s ears began to crescendo when Wade’s grip on him loosened.

Peter let out a breath and slowly slipped his bad arm from Wade’s grasp. What Peter did next was either very smart or very stupid. He reached up and touched Wade’s arm tentatively. He knew how Wade reacted to touch, how any physical contact seemed to shock some deep part of his psyche. Wade began to blink rapidly his body going rigid. Peter took another gamble and placed his hand on the side of Wade’s face, the only part of his skin that truly remained uncovered.

“Wade? It’s okay. You’re okay. I promise you’re okay.”

“Petey?” Wade asked, confusion spilling from his lips, his mind taking a moment to catch up with his surroundings.

Wade let Peter go, his body scrambling backwards, more rigid and jerky than Peter had ever seen him move. For a solid minute, Wade remained unspeaking pressed against the opposite side of the closet, as far away from Peter as possible. It was then Peter realised they were both shaking.

“Holy fuck,” Wade breathed after a moment.

“Holy fuck,” Peter echoed, half frozen.

Peter kept his bad shoulder cradled to his chest while the rest of his body remained unchanged from when Wade had let him go. One hand remained behind his head as he lay looking up at the slowly swaying light above them. They must have hit the light. Peter couldn’t remember when.

There was a moment where neither man seemed to know what to do. Peter was half ready for Wade to tell him off, but he didn’t. He was ready for Wade to start his endless stream of babbling, but he didn’t. They stayed there in silence. Time appeared to freeze. This was time within a black hole. This was a moment where time did not exist.


	7. Sound in a Vacuum

The moments that followed Wade’s outburst could be described as sound in a vacuum. It was ear-shatteringly quiet. True silence is something not often experienced. The common idea of silence is normally filled with small ambience, like the shuffle of feet or the ruffle of the breeze. The closet had transformed into an anechoic chamber, a room without an echo. Peter could hear the rush of blood through his body and the hum of invisible crickets. He felt utterly vulnerable.

Vulnerable was never a word Peter had associated with himself. When he thought of vulnerability his mind when to scared children and small animals but at that moment Peter was vulnerable. Behind his head, his shoulder hung like that of a ragdoll thrown down a flight of stairs. There was a tight ache in it as though his muscles were a rubber band stretched close to snapping. His mind told him to move but his body was locked in place.

Peter’s eyes remained fixed on the slow sway of the light above him. The light acted like a planet in orbit, spinning in slow circles. Halos of light clouded Peter’s vision. His body had stopped trembling. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He tasted blood and was unsure if he had bit his lip in the scuffle or if his taste buds had gone out in sympathy due to the throbbing pain throughout the rest of his body. Peter could finally hear something outside of himself. It was Wade’s breath, shallow and ragged.

As Peter lay there, he thought of Wade and wondered where sleep had taken him. Peter couldn’t help but think of Vietnam and the uncertainty that was the present day. He wondered if people on the far side of the earth were laying has he now lay, dying. He wondered if in another life that could have been him and if that might be his life in the coming years. He wondered if the war would end soon and if wars ever really ended. He questioned why his chest felt so tight and this moment felt so familiar.

Peter felt the light touch of a gloved hand on his bare ankle. He didn’t react to the touch. His body was a phantom to his mind. The hand disappeared and reappeared as quickly as it had been removed. This time Peter felt the rough texture of Wade’s bare hand against  his skin. Wade’s skin was rough but his touch was soft, uncertain. Peter let out an elongated sigh, slowly beginning to feel himself slide back into his body as one slips into clothes.

“Petey? Peter? You with me buddy?” How long had Wade been talking?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hurt you, did I? Actually- fuck that I scared you. I’m really fucking sorry.”

This wasn’t the first time Wade had said sorry to Peter but this sounded like the first time he truly meant it.

“Can you look at me? There we go champ… hey. It’s okay. I’m sorry- fuck I’m-” Wade’s voice cracked, cutting himself off.

He then fell silent, unable to speak. His thumb glided up and down Peter’s ankle. It gave Peter a tether to his body, something to hold onto. The rough touch kept him tied to that moment. He felt his limbs twitch slightly, finally coming back to life.

Peter attempted to sit, his body screaming in protest. He managed to prop himself up against the wall opposite to Wade. He had been worried he had dislocated his good shoulder but after some coaxing, it slid back into place. Besides that, all Peter had to remember the moment by were a few bruises that would fade in time and some possible life-long psychological scars. Great. Wade didn’t take his hand off Peter. He didn’t pull away from Wade’s touch.

“It’s okay, no harm no foul. I didn’t know my shoulder could bend back that far. New trick for parties,” He breathed fighting to keep his voice cool. In Peter’s ears, his voice didn’t sound like his own.

It was strange, Wade being so quiet. Peter didn’t know how to react. He tried to fill the silence with something.

“My friend Johnny has this party trick where he swallows matches and breathes out fire, once he set his sister’s-” Wade scoffed interrupting Peter’s train of thought.

“You talk when you’re nervous,” Wade commented, his voice managing to keep even.

“Yeah well you don’t and it’s making me nervous.”

This was followed by a beat of silence, then another.

“So, you want me to talk?” Wade’s brow quirked as if in mild surprise.

“I guess I do. It helps…” It helped calm Peter down but there was no way he was finishing that sentence.

“I can recite the whole of _Casablanca_ if that helps.”  The scary thing was Peter didn’t doubt it.

“If you say, ‘ _here’s looking at you ki_ d’, I’m leaving.” A sly smile crept over Wade’s face.

“I was going to say, _‘I think this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship_ ,’ but I like yours better.”

Peter sighed deeply and rested his head against the wall, feeling his heart and body start to settle.

“ _Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine…_ ” Peter knew there were more important things to talk about. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

They both sat in the chaos they had made with good and non-descript intentions quoting films because talking about feelings was too treacherous.

“ _Just because you despise me, you’re the only one I trust_ ,” Wade breathed. The air was thick with words unsaid.

“What were you dreaming of?” Peter asked when he couldn’t stand the tension.

Wade hesitated, removing his hand from Peter’s ankle and slipping back on his glove. He drummed his fingers against his knee absentmindedly. His head tilted from one side to the next, an internal struggle visible on his face.

“I don’t remember, it’s more of a feeling.” Peter nodded as if he understood but could only slightly relate.

“What were you doing in here?” Wade asked the question like he already knew the answer.

“I was trying to help. Part of… all this was my fault too. I startled you. I’m sorry. I should have known something like that would happen. I guess I’m sorry about looking through the files too, but I did work some of it out.” The second sorry was slightly less sincere.

“You’re sorry you got _caught_ looking at the files. But I expected it. It’s what I would have done. I just didn’t expect I would make it so easy for you. Sleep is for the weak.”

It took Peter a moment to think through Wade’s words. Despite what Peter kept telling himself, he and Wade weren’t that different. Part of Peter thought this might be true while the other half was vehemently denying it. Wade’s moral compass was stuck in a magnetic field, spinning illogically and landing on whatever suited him at the time. Peter had a moral code, he knew what was right and what was wrong. He wasn’t an ‘ends justify the means’, kind of guy. Good means justify good ends. Wade probably thought that was naïve. He subscribed to the beat poets school of thought. First thought, best thought.

“I’m sorry- again,” Wade uttered not looking directly at Peter, shaking him from his thoughts.

Peter shook his head, using all his energy to move himself to Wade’s side of the closet. He nudged Wade’s shoulder ignoring the pain that shot through his own body.

“No more sorrys. In this circumstance, I forgive you.” Wade looked as though he didn’t believe him.

Peter sighed and picked up one of the papers he had managed to decode showing it to Wade, explaining to him what he had done to crack it. It was mostly something to distract the two of them, to clear the air. He was caught up in explaining something when he paused realising Wade had placed his hand in Peter’s open palm.

“Why are you holding my hand?” Peter remarked.

“It helps me focus.”

Peter’s eyes trailed over what he had decoded, trying to see if he could make sense of any of it. From the look on Wade’s face, it made sense to him. His grasp on Peter’s hand grew tighter.

“What’s _Project X_?” Peter asked, waiting for an answer, Wade simply shook his head.

“I don’t know,” He looked as if there was more he wasn’t saying.

Peter sorted through the papers, finding what he was looking for and passing it off to Wade.

“Project X aims to build on the research of Project Bluebird/Artichoke gathered from August 1951 to April 1953. Local and national bases of operations aim to be in commission as early as January 1966.” Even through his gloves, Wade’s fingernails dug into the palms of Peter’s hands before easing up.

“What does that mean?” Peter pressed. Wade took the paper from Peter, half scrunching it into a ball before thinking better of it.

“I’m going to heat up breakfast,” Wade breathed ignoring Peter’s question.

Wade removed his hand from Peter’s, standing and extending it to help the smaller man to his feet.

“You can still leave- if you want.” Wade sounded as though he expected Peter to go.

Peter took Wade’s hand and stood, his body groaning in protest.

“What’s for breakfast?” Peter asked as the ghost of a smile crossed Wade’s face. Peter wouldn’t push it now, but he wasn’t dropping the subject.

“I got Weasel to drop off some Mexican food last night.” Peter stifled a laugh.

“Chimichangas for breakfast?”

“It’s like you read my mind. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day so it should be the tastiest.”

Peter smiled faintly and nodded brushing down his hair and adjusting his glasses. After a beat of hesitation, he felt arms encircling him. Wade was hugging him. He smelled of leather, spice and something reminiscent of cigarette smoke or gunpowder.  Peter didn’t know where the hell this had come from. He froze his body on edge, muscles screaming, and heart aflutter. What the ever-loving fuck was that?

“One last sorry. Then I’ll let you bury the hatchet. Figuratively or literally I have a hatchet named Delilah somewhere around here.”

“Why does ‘A Hatchet named Delilah’ sound like the sequel to _A Streetcar Named Desire_?” Peter mused his voice muffled by Wade’s shoulder.

Wade was both taller and broader than Peter which made hugging interesting. Peter wasn’t used to being the smaller one in a hug. There was a comfort to it. He was always the one doing the holding but in this instance, he was the one being held. It was different, not better or worse, just different. It took Peter a while to relax into the hug. It would have lasted for less than a minute but to Peter, it felt like a lifetime. Wade seemed to sense Peter was uncomfortable and pulled back.

“Sorry, fuck I was trying to say sorry. I’m no fucking good at this.” Peter needed to think of something to say.

“I think I might have a shower before breakfast. I’ll meet you in a few,” Peter mumbled taking a step back from Wade avoiding his eyes.

Peter wasn’t mad at Wade, not for what had happened when he woke up but he needed space. He wasn’t scared of him either. Wade had ample opportunity to do something but he hadn’t. Peter had heard the term ‘gross stress reaction’ thrown about regarding those involved in wars. People’s bodies would randomly exhibit a fight or flight response with no obvious cause. It was tied up with past traumas, something Peter could relate to. He understood why Wade had reacted the way he did but that didn’t quell the random unsettled feeling bubbling in his stomach.

Peter needed some space.

***

The time Peter spent hunching over himself in the shower didn’t matter. He had removed his shoulder gauze and a slow river of blood wept down his naked frame. The warm water made him feel lightheaded. Wade’s shower had two settings, freezing and scolding.  Peter grounded himself by pressing his forehead against the cold tile wall. The hot water against his body grounded him. Time passed. The water ran cold. Peter pulled himself together. The smell of black coffee, cigarette smoke and reheated Mexican food drifted into the bathroom. Wade’s knuckles wrapped on the door.

“Peter? You still in there?” Peter let a sigh escape his lips.

“No, I climbed out the window,” He called back turning off the water in the shower.

“Did you grow wings too? We’re on the sixth story.” That was good to know. At least Peter could somewhat envision their location.

“Nah, I just climbed down with my super-powers” Peter jeered towelling down his body.

He slid on his glasses and looked at the pile of clothes Weasel had brought for him. Peter wasn’t picky. He pulled on whatever his hands first touched and combed his fingers through his hair trying to tame it. While wet it looked compliant but give it a few minutes and Peter knew it would be back to resembling a mop or unkempt poodle.

Peter opened the door and strode into the main room where Wade stood expectantly. He handed Peter a mug and probed.

“Flight or super strength?” Peter rolled his eyes and took a swig of coffee, it carried the bitter aftertaste of burnt beans.

“Neither they’re both clichés.”

“A man after my own heart,” Wade commented offhandedly and plonked back down on the couch massacred Mexican food in hand. Peter couldn’t work out if it was meant to be a burrito or an enchilada.

He grabbed the plate Wade had left for him on the kitchen counter and sat down beside him on the couch. Peter took a large bite of his food. It was both cold and hot. As he suspected, it was a burrito. After a moment of eating in silence, Wade asked,

“Do you want to talk about what happened before or just sweep it under the rug?”

“The second one,” Peter decided trying to stop a slick of grease from running down his wrist.

“Twentieth-century masculinity has really fucked you over hasn’t it buddy?” Wade observed grabbing a cigarette from a box tucked between his couch cushions.

“I know I freaked out but you watched a guy get shot and barely flinched but you almost passed out in there. If we’re going to be hiding out together I’d like it if you weren’t fucking terrified of me.”

“You want us to talk about our feelings?” Peter asked already knowing the answer. Wade nodded.

“I don’t want to discuss every intimate detail of my past and my feelings with a total stranger. It has nothing to do with me being emotionally unavailable.”

Wade quirked a brow and placed his cigarette between his lips taking a long drag.

“That, ladies and gentlemen is what my therapist would call deflecting.” Peter felt the urge to cough.

“You know those things can give you cancer, right?” A bitter smile crossed Wade’s face.

“Cancer? Been there done that, plus no one actually believes that new-fad science, mumbo-jumbo. Everyone smokes. Next thing you’ll tell me The Philadelphia Experiment is a hoax.”

“That’s what I call deflecting,” Peter mimicked, grabbing his mug and taking another swig of the burnt coffee. He leant away from Wade setting his jaw.

“How the hell could you expect me not to be scared of you after everything I’ve seen you do? You keep insisting that you’re a good person right before you do something fucking deplorable.” Peter didn’t mean what he was saying and yet the words came so easily they sounded true.

The look on Wade’s face told Peter everything he needed to know. Wade believed his lie, of course, he did. Wade looked away from Peter bouncing his knee up and down, a nervous tick twitching over his body.

“I’m trying to be better,” Wade’s normally booming voice sounded small. Part of Peter fractured.

The room was silent. It was sound in a vacuum but Peter’s head was unbelievably loud. He was lying. He was a horrible person. He needed to tell the truth but he hardly knew how to do that. He didn’t know what the truth was.

Peter let out a groan. Wade didn’t scare him because he knew Wade wouldn't hurt him but Wade Wilson managed to challenge all of Peter’s prior beliefs. He wasn’t scared of Wade. He was scared of how Wade made him feel. All his life Peter had been told how to be and how not to be. He had been told right and wrong, how to act and how not to act. He had his own morals which Wade constantly shattered. Peter also had his own past, his own closet filled with skeletons. Wade digging around and getting close made him panic.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Peter breathed unsure of how to articulate how he really felt.

Wade’s face morphed to one of confusion. He was willing to understand Peter being terrified of him, of hating him but this new confession made little sense to him.

“Don’t try to be kind to me kid. That false hope stuff is bullshit. You said what you said because you meant it. At least we’re open with each other.”  

“Look I’m not the only one holding stuff back, why don’t you tell me what the hell that folder is about?” Peter shot back.

“I’m not telling you because you don’t know what the fuck you’re getting yourself into.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what I’m getting myself into Wade?” Wade rubbed his temple.

“You’re driving me crazy Peter Parker. I’m trying to protect you even if you are a suicidal maniac with a hero complex. There’s this thing called ‘wanting to live to thirty’, you should try it some time.”

“I’m not some damsel that needs protecting. I’m fine on my own. You’re the suicidal maniac with a hero complex. You told me when we first met you were the good guy. When are you going to start proving that? I think you just saved me to try and save yourself from your own fucking conscience.” Peter Parker was an idiot.

Wade looked at Peter his jaw set, quietly seething. He didn’t tell Peter he was wrong. The air was thick with all the things Wade didn’t say. Peter couldn’t deal with the tension any longer. He didn’t want the conversation to continue. He stood and walked over to the television, wanting some noise to drown out his own thoughts.

“I just love talking about feelings,” He breathed sarcastically switching on the television.

Peter watched as a sea of black and white images stuttered to life. As always, the news was on. He had tried to focus on the news anchors’ voice but his energy was draining from him. He sat back down, as far from Wade as possible.

The chatter of the television bounced around Peter’s head without being heard. His mind wasn’t distracted by thinking so much as feeling. The feeling was a muddled mix of anger, frustration and guilt. Wade stood up and exited the room without him noticing. Peter heard a loud crash from the bathroom that resembled the shattering of glass. The shower could be heard running not long after.

Greyscale images continued to dance across the box-shaped television. There was war footage, protests in the streets and to Peter’s surprise an image of his own apartment. The world moves fast, meaning that Peter’s little apartment complex should be yesterday’s news, already forgotten in the public consciousness but it wasn’t. Peter heard his own name being spoken and felt his blood run cold. The image switched to the fire at the Bowery X.

“New information has been released to the public today regarding the identity of a serial arsonist and possible gang member loose on the streets of New York City.”

Another building, somewhere in Harlem flashed across the screen, smouldering.

“A backpack and personal items belonging to a ‘Peter Parker’ were found at both locations. Parker was a resident of an apartment complex in Chinatown which earlier this month was evacuated after a fire alarm was pulled. Witnesses also reported hearing gunfire and several bodies were found in the building. The police have yet to find the offender but are urging those with information of his whereabouts to come forward. Family of the assailant was contacted but they were not available to make a statement.”

Three thoughts came at once. Peter didn’t know it was possible until that moment to have concurrent thoughts. Three trains of thought emerged and crashed into one another at once, derailing all logic and critical thinking. The first, he- Peter Parker was a wanted criminal. The second, someone was trying to frame him. The third, the news had tried to contact his aunt, who spent half her days in her duplex in Queens. If they hadn’t been able to get a hold of her something had happened to her. That was Peter’s fault.

He sat there for a moment his ears ringing, his hands balling into fists and his mind spinning. He needed to get out of there. He needed to find May.

How had someone gotten his backpack? That’s right, Wade had forgotten it in the smouldering remains of the Bowery X, the fire he was now accused of starting. Masters’ men must have picked it up.

He could get arrested the second he stepped outside. Peter didn’t know how to be a criminal. He hadn’t done anything wrong but that didn’t matter. The news stations, the police department and the general public didn’t know that. How could Peter prove them wrong?

None of this mattered in the end. His aunt was the only family he had left. He had gotten her into this and it was his job to find her. He had no concrete plan besides this. Peter wasn’t the type to act without thinking but no matter how long he thought about the situation he was put in, he wouldn’t be able to come up with a better conclusion. He knew how this would end but he needed to try.

Peter stood up from the couch. His feet felt both heavy and weightless as he stumbled through Wade’s apartment. The shower was still running as Peter grabbed a duffle bag Wade had on his kitchen benchtop. He shook the contents of the bag onto the floor, which consisted of handguns and ammunition. Peter hesitated before putting one of the handguns and a magazine back into the duffle bag.

In the end, the duffle bag contained a spare change of clothes, several gauze plasters, disinfectant, one of Wade’s handheld radio devices and the handgun with one magazine of ammunition. Peter had taken the radio in the hopes that if there was more news about his or Aunt May’s whereabouts he would be the first to know.

It would be smart to take money but Peter felt as though that would be stealing from Wade. Peter had taken several objects from Wade’s apartment but they were things that wouldn’t be missed. It didn’t make what he was doing right but he could bend his morals just this once. However, taking money felt underhanded. He would have to work his way around it. It wasn’t as though a wanted criminal could hitch a ride on the subway.

Without a clear plan, Peter had one goal in mind. He needed to find his aunt and make sure she was safe. The first place to look, of course, was her place in Queens. Without a second thought, Peter pulled on Wade’s coat knowing the weather outside would be brisk at this time of year despite the mild heat inside the stuffy apartment. Wade’s set of keys was in the pocket of the coat, it smelled of spice and smoke.

Peter took one last look around the apartment.  He looked at Shelob and his Spider-man sketches reminding himself that if all went well he would be back. Peter didn’t know why but this thought was comforting. He turned back to the door, fiddling with the many locks until finally, it opened. He stepped out of the safe house.


	8. Hypnopompic

“Hey, aren’t you the guy on the television?”

Peter managed to get exactly four feet from Wade’s apartment door before he was recognised. He hoped he would last at least six.

The space outside Wade’s apartment was a dilapidated hallway in disarray. Wade’s place had been cluttered but otherwise homey this place, however, was the opposite. Several bodies lay in the hallway, alive but breathing either too slowly or too rapidly. There was nothing visibly wrong with them. It wasn’t until Peter saw the track marks littering the arm of a sleeping man that he knew what was going on. The voice of his accuser, however, came from a woman at the end of the hallway. A rolled-up cigarette was tucked between her lips, stained red from her lipstick and smelling fruity.

The woman raised a brow, dressed in nothing but her underwear and an unwrapped silk robe. Eyes up, Parker. Peter reminded himself his cheeks already flushed. Her stature was imposing as she wore a set of chunky, thigh-high boots. Even without the shoes, she would have been taller than him.

“Me? On the T.V.? No way.” Peter stepped over one of the men passed out in the hallway his eyes searching for the stairwell. If Wade was telling the truth they were on the sixth floor

“Yeah, earlier today. Same face and all. I can’t place the name. Paul?” This was not happening. Peter tried to continue.

“Paul McCartney? Definitely not me. I can’t hold a tune to save my life.”

Peter came to the realisation that the stairwell was at the other side of the hallway just beyond the woman. She smirked slightly and used her body to shield the exit, leaning against one wall and resting her boot on the other. Her legs were toned, her knees bruised.  Peter found himself suddenly interested in the pattern of the carpet.

“Peter. That’s the name.” Peter groaned to himself knowing that the woman wasn’t willing to give up easily.

“I’m not a criminal. Don’t believe everything the T.V. tells you.” The woman let her boot drop from the opposing wall.

“Look, Sport. In a place like this, no one cares what you did. Everyone here is doing something illegal. Everyone knows how to keep things hush, hush from the pigs. There are three types around here, people who do crimes, people who do drugs and people who do people. Nobody’s judging anybody but you don’t look like you belong here. You look like you work for The Man. It makes people twitchy. You dig?”

The woman took a step closer to Peter. She was so close he could see the flecks of mascara below her eyes and smell her cigarette so strongly he had to hold back the urge to gag.

“Yeah. Got it.” Peter breathed trying once again to step past her. She stepped with him blocking his way yet again.

“Wait here then. I’m trying to help you out,” She called and rushed back into what Peter supposed was her apartment, re-emerging with a small toiletry bag.

“Come closer. I won’t bite- unless you want me to.”

“No thank you,” He breathed out overly polite and slightly flustered.

Peter hesitated before taking a step forward, seeing no other clear options to get past her. Since Peter had last seen her she had lost the cigarette and tied the robe up tightly around her waist, covering most of her body. Peter had the sense she had done this for his benefit.

The woman tousled his hair and grabbed his face with her large hand. She looked Peter over, her nails digging into his cheek. She then pulled Peter’s glasses off handing them to him.

“I can’t really see without them,” Peter argued. Through blurred vision he watched her roll her eyes.

“You don’t need to see. You just need to look the part.”

She rummaged around in her bag, grabbing out a brush and powder, quickly dusting it over Peter’s face. By the time she was finished, she had swiped a shimmering gloss over his lips, pinched his cheeks until they looked slightly flushed and mindlessly tugged on his clothes making him look strategically dishevelled. 

“Last step, tilt your head a little- there we go.”

The woman dragged a black pencil across the waterline of his eyes making him almost instantly tear up. Surely that couldn't be safe. Peter couldn’t put contact lenses in without worrying he would somehow irreparably damage his eyes. He tried not to think of the chemical compounds that went into such a product, knowing that if he thought too long about stearyl heptanoate he would want to claw his own eyes out. The idea of lining his eyes with sperm whale- by-product made his skin crawl. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. He understood makeup from an aesthetic perspective but chemically- he didn’t want to think about it.

“Are you sure this stuff is safe?”

Peter also tried not to think about the fact it was a very well used eyeliner pencil meaning he was definitely sharing his eye goo.

“It’s fine kid everyone does it,” She assured as she stood back to admire her work.

“And now you look the part fire-starter. Aren’t you a pretty little thing? Not many guys can pull off pretty and handsome. You came from Wade’s place, didn’t you? I can see what he sees in you.” She mused.

Peter didn’t need pinched cheeks to be flushed. He was about to deny having anything to do with Wade but that would mean a longer conversation, something he didn’t have time for.

“I didn’t-” Peter began but she waved him off. He really needed to get out of there.

“Anyway, Wade’s always looking out for me and the other girls when things get hairy. If you need a quiet way to get some place take the taxi round back. Tell him Candy sent you.”

Peter nodded and muttered a word of thanks. The woman gave a lazy salute and returned to her room. Peter wasn’t sure if taking the word of a stranger was wise but he didn’t have many other options.

Wade had been telling the truth, Peter came to realise as he walked down the stairwell. They had been on the sixth floor. The rest of the building resembled that of the hallway outside Wade’s apartment. The bare bones of the structure were surprisingly elegant. Peter could tell that it had once been a prestigious place to stay but years had aged it badly, leaving it a shell of its former self. He could imagine people at the dawn of the century, before the great wars paying a pretty penny to call this place home, it was spacious by New York standards and as Peter came to realise, in the heart of the city. Once outside Peter was struck with the revelation that he really was in Hell’s Kitchen. He looked around finding himself on 57th and ninth. Just as Candy had said, around back was a taxi.

There was an odd rattling sound from the trunk. Peter swore he saw it move but his vision was a blur of colours and malformed shapes so he ignored it. Instead, he walked over to the driver’s side window, tapping on the glass. The driver had the radio turned up and was examining a photo on his dashboard. As he saw Peter he jumped slightly before winding the window down.

“Hello?”

“Hey? I was just upstairs. This woman… Candy said you’d be willing to give me a ride.”

Peter sounded unsure of himself. Peter was unsure of himself. He didn’t feel like himself in Wade’s jacket with makeup and no glasses. He felt as though he was playing the part of someone else, he just didn’t know who. 

“I can’t pay you,” He quickly added ready to be turned away.

The man turned down the radio and opened the passenger door, gesturing for Peter to come in.

“It’s okay. I mostly do this job for the thrills.”

Peter didn’t know exactly what ‘thrills’ taxi drivers endured daily but if he fully operated out of Wade’s rundown apartment complex Peter could only imagine. He climbed into the passenger’s seat sliding his glasses back on, feeling a headache coming on.

“How can you make a living that way?” Peter asked curiously.

“I owe a guy. He helped me out, pays me by the hour to sit out here and take people places.”

Peter had a vague idea he knew who was paying the man but didn’t want to push things further. He didn’t have the time. He gave the address to the driver and tried to calm his thundering heartbeat as the taxi pulled away into the hustle and bustle of the New York streets he had grown up loving and had been separated from for what felt like a lifetime. A part of him felt as though he had been dreaming and now, in the smoke-filled light of morning, amongst the signs of neon and the decaying smell of piss and trash, he had finally woken up.

***

Wade had been going to therapy on and off for the last two years so he liked to think he had picked up some coping mechanisms. His personal favourite from his ‘toolbox’- as his therapist called it, was a little thing called ‘ _breaking stuff’_.

It was a one size fits all kind of quick fix. You feeling overwhelmed? Break stuff. Struggling with strong and icky emotions like guilt, shame or a vague indifference to things you once loved? Break stuff. Frustrated by the fact that you’re a fictional character constantly struggling with their own identity and reliving the same redemption-arc only to regress back to a jackass because writers lack creativity? Break stuff.

The emotion Wade was currently dealing with was this disgusting culmination of shame, self-loathing and general anger. If you wanted to visualise his emotions just think of when you’re moving apartments and you realise that your heavy ass couch can actually move. Beneath the couch is this half-festering pile of dust, mould and leftover chunks of microwaved meals. That pile of stuff was Wade’s emotions. He never really knew how to explain his emotions.

Don’t know how to explain how you feel? Break stuff.

The ‘stuff’ in question included his bathroom mirror, his toothbrush and two knuckles on his right hand. He never said it was a ‘healthy’ coping mechanism but it helped. His knuckles were bleeding and a shard of glass had wedged itself under his skin. He used the other hand to pull the glass out. He sliced open his good hand but he got the glass out- so win, win.

He should deal with the blood. He’s ruined too many of his favourite shirts by covering them in blood. He wasn’t in the mood for that to happen again. He stripped off his many layers of clothes, thankful to be naked. Wearing so much made him sweat and that sweat would make his skin itch.

When he was a kid Wade had seen a heroin addict shower in water so hot he had given himself third-degree burns. His skin had been that itchy. Wade still remembered looking at the man’s piss coloured nails, seeing long chunks of flesh wedged beneath them. Imagine fat spaghetti strips of festering red-white flesh. Imagine never wanting to eat spaghetti again.

That man might have been his dad or his uncle or some random guy. Wade didn’t sweat the details. He was a big-picture kind of guy. At the time, he hadn’t understood how someone could do that to themselves but holy fuck, now he did. He climbed into the shower letting the water run over his now naked body.

He tried not to look at himself while naked. It was depressing. Speaking of depressing- Wade recalled what Peter had said to him. Peter was scared of him and thought he was ‘fucking deplorable’. Wade was hurt but not surprised. He was wondering when the kid would get some common sense. For a second Wade had let himself hope that Peter was actually starting to trust him. He didn’t blame Peter for not trusting him. Wade didn’t trust himself half the time. He had also hurt Peter.

All Wade had been trying to do was protect Peter and instead, he had managed to hurt him. That was just how Wade worked. Whatever he wanted to do, he did the opposite. He was out to get himself, which made perfect sense considering there was a multitude of voices in his head, none of them friendly.  

Sometimes the voices were his own but most of the time they weren’t. The voices were a part of him. He was sane enough to realise that. It didn’t make them easier to listen to. They had their own origin story.

Wade let the hot water stream over his naked body, his eyes sliding shut. When he closed his eyes, he went back to that place, that time. Behind his lids, Wade saw a small room and a man with a mass of faces. He saw things he didn’t know how to explain and felt things he didn’t previously know he could feel. He could pinpoint the exact moment the voices had come into his life. It wasn’t until several years later the nightmares had started. The voices started the time his life and his previously normal face, changed forever.

So, strap in reader for a serious sob story/ info-dump because Wade hasn’t seen his therapist in months and if he was going to be able to break the fourth wall he might as well do it for his own gain. He once read two pages of _A Clockwork Orange_ so he’s got this ‘unreliable narrator’ thing down pact.

The year was 1952. It was a bitch of a year. Fuck 1952.  

Good old Uncle Sam was taking the hydrogen bomb out for a spin while the Queen was trying out the atomic bomb in the colonies. At the time, Polio was still very much a thing and _Singin’ in the Rain_ was in cinemas and in Wade’s opinion, overrated. Fuck _Singin’ in the Rain_.

Wade Wilson was young, dumb and had a body riddled with cancer. He had run away from home and before cancer had rendered his body essentially useless he had been doing some sketchy work for both the military and the CIA. This was despite him not being old enough for it to be considered ‘legal’. Then again, what he was doing wasn’t legal in the first place so Wade was the perfect guy for the job.

Here’s some life advice from a guy who’s been there. If you’re working for a secret branch of the military or CIA and they offer to help you out with some ‘ground-breaking’ medical trials, run in the other direction.  Let yourself die. Dying is better. Dying is less painful. This is where things get real tin-hat-like.

The first few months lulled Wade into a false sense of security. He sat through months of chemotherapy, up until that point in his life chemo was the hardest thing he’d ever done. You don’t need him to tell you cancer’s a bitch. You know that. However, the months that came after would be worse than any hell some imaginary god could make up.

Project MKUltra.  

Imagine thinking you were going to get chemotherapy, like any other day. Imagine through some medical miracle all your cancer is gone, but you don’t know it. Imagine getting injected with a Long-Island Ice Tea style cocktail of drugs, legal and illegal and having no idea what the fuck was going on. Imagine this happening daily. It happened so often time and space lost meaning. Everything lost meaning. Reality became fuzzy around the edges.

1952 bled into 1953. Wade couldn’t recall much. There had been a little bit of torture but Wade had been lucky, most days it was the vanilla kind of torture. He was just getting slapped around. These days were Wade’s favourite because it was simple. It was easy. In the absence of constant pain, torture had meaning but when pain was all your body knew it meant nothing.

Different men with different voices would tell Wade what to do or ask him questions. If he didn’t comply they would slap him around a little, tie him to a chair and tip it over or stick his head in a bucket of water until his lungs felt like they would burst. It was lightweight stuff. Sometimes he would get sick. He remembered waking up in cold sweats, freezing and vomiting. Sometimes his skin felt like it was on fire or that the room was spinning. All the while the cocktail of drugs bled into different parts of his mind making him see and hear things that weren’t there.

For several years, Wade didn’t remember 1952 or 1953. The years that came after were a blur of point A to point B. He could tell you the cities he was in and the people he worked for but nothing else. He had become a shell of himself one he had to shape and reshape over time. Wade’s mind was like a broken arm which insisted on healing wrong. He had to keep breaking it until it set right. 

1952 and 1953 had been walled off in his mind for almost half a decade. He was grateful for these walls. When they came down it resembled a dam wall crumbling. The memories came back in fragments while the feelings were a tidal wave previously buried deep within his twisted psyche.

The first memory that came back to Wade had been the strongest. It was the one that came back to him most often now. It came one morning in 1957. He had been driving through the mid-west of America. Logan sat in the passenger’s seat, his window rolled down and a cigar between his lips. He kicked his feet up on the dash and cursed for Wade to shut up whenever he tried to start a conversation. The behemoth of a man known as Victor Creed was spread out in the backseat trying to sleep. Wade hated having boring road-trip buddies. They didn’t even want to play I-spy.

Two men were chattering obnoxiously on the radio. One man had a voice like tinfoil grinding against teeth. He sounded like the type of guy who wanted to sell you something. The other had a voice like butter over silk. He sounded like he should have introduced smooth jazz acts. Tinfoil teeth greeted ‘good mornin,’ over the radio static. Something in Wade’s mind broke. The radio wasn’t switched on.

His car, the road and the radio all disappeared and he was back in 1953, balancing on a knife-edge between sleeping and waking. The world had a texture like shag carpet. Everything sounded as though it were rising to him from the depths of a cave, warped and echoed. A record player from the far corner of the room had been playing the soundtrack of _Singin’ in the Rain_ on loop. The room was a claustrophobic square that spanned roughly nine feet each side. There was one exit.

‘Good morning, good morning,’ the music chirped sounding shrill in Wade’s ears. It had the loud ringing affect often reserved for hangovers.

He felt pain. It was unlike anything he had previously experienced or anything he had felt since. He still felt echoes of that pain like the aftershock of an earthquake. He was on the floor of the small room that had been his home for an immeasurable amount of time. Wade looked down at his arms seeing the flesh bubbling off his bones like boiling broth. There was blood, exposed skin and the smell of something chemical.

Wade blinked and saw his car and the road back in 1957. He felt like he had just woken up, having almost careened off the road. Part of him wished he had. Logan’s grip on the steering wheel was vicelike, his voice strained as he cursed at Wade.

“What the hell was that?” He spat when Wade could finally hear.

“Bad cocaine in Kansas kickin’ in.”

The second fragment of the memory would come months later as Wade climbed into a cheap hotel shower somewhere in Bolivia. The pipes had rattled and shuttered as the water hesitated to fall from the shower head. It was clogged by years of rust but Wade didn’t mind. He had stayed in worse dumps and at least they had running water. The week prior he had been hiding out in a tent in Chile bathing in a river and sharing his food with foxes, and not the sexy kind.

He had been lying low after he ‘un-alived’ a man in Santiago. In Wade’s defence, he had been into some seriously shady business. The man had his fat fingers firmly shoved in several honey pots, running a drug cartel and human trafficking ring. Wade remembered he had huge, fat fingers because during his planned assassination Wade hadn’t been on his A-game. The man managed to wrap his hands around his throat. He had been so sweaty that his chubby hands slid up and down Wade’s throat as though his throat was a throbbing cock and this middle-aged man was a porn-star aiming to please. Wade took what he could get.

After things had settled Wade could finally move on and tie up some loose ends in Bolivia. It was mostly beating up henchmen and ‘dealing with’ the shit-ton of drugs left behind. For the first time in a week, Wade could finally rest. He had splashed out and paid to stay in the best place he could find. Since he was staying in a small town an hour away from Santa Cruz the best he could get was a place with working electricity and hot water.

Wade was grateful for hot water but when it hit his skin it was hotter than expected, the scorching water scolding his naked frame. His body seized up and again he had gone back to 1953.

“Does that hurt?” A voice asked.

Wade had recognised the voice in the sense you recognise a stranger at a family gathering who says they haven’t seen you in years. It is the vague possibility of recognition. You have this feeling like you should know them.

Wade’s hand was being held elbow deep in a bucket filled with something that burnt beyond pain. His skin doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. If you wanted to picture it just think of deep frying a corndog only in this case the stick is the bones in his arm, the hot dog is his exposed muscle and the batter is his skin. It’s the type of deep-fried corndog you get from a kid on the first day of his job, where there is so much batter it falls to pieces in the fryer leaving you with a slightly soggy hotdog on a stick. All that to say Wade’s arm was completely fucked. 

“Fuck yes,” He groaned through gritted teeth.

The man let his hand go, causing him to pull it from the mixture and cradle it like a child to his chest. The chemicals bleached and worried holes where his arm touched his shirt. The man sat back and pulled a small notebook from the breast pocket of his coat and began writing notes.

“Alright, now pour it over yourself,” He instructed sounding bored. When Wade didn’t comply, the man looked up from his notes.

“Do you understand?” Wade’s veins buzzed as though they were made of radio static.

“Fuck this guy,” A voice rose from deep within Wade’s skull. He recognised it in the way one recognises a once-repressed memory. He sounded like radio static ground between tinfoil teeth.

“I don’t know. This crazy comrade might have a point. If we kill ourselves it’s all over red rover,” Another voice chipped in. This voice was smooth and rich.

“And if we kill ourselves how does that help us get some sweet revenge on this cock-sucking fucker?” The first voice replied.

“We would need to get out of here to get revenge.”

Despite the current pain shooting through his right arm, Wade found his hands balling into fists.

“Can you shut up and let me think?” He hissed watching as the man with the notebook raised a brow and jotted something down.

“Stop acting like you know what’s best for us. You have no fucking clue,” Radio static jittered ignoring Wade’s plea.

“Let us die. We’re already going crazy, listen to us. We’re talking to ourselves.”

Wade cupped his ears, his crippled hand screaming in protest as the two voices continued to bicker, the sound bouncing around in his skull. Even with his ears covered the voices were unbearably loud.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Wade pleaded curling his large body into itself.

The other man in the room was speaking but Wade couldn’t make out his words through the rest of the chatter. The man’s voice became louder but so did the voices in his head. Everything was too loud. There was too much light in the room and too much pain in his body.

He just wanted it to stop. He wanted everything to stop. No more pain, no more fighting. Fuck. Please. Let it stop.

Wade grabbed the bucket from the man and drenched his body in the liquid praying to every got he had previously called horse-shit that he would finally get to die. He just wanted everything to be over. He remembered a pain beyond the measure of words coursing over his body for mere seconds before the world had gone black.

The first time Wade had experience this memory back in 1957 he ended up curled into a ball on the floor of his shower, his hands over his ears and his heart pounding.

The twenty-seventh time Wade experience this memory he still ended up curled into a ball on the floor of his shower, his hands over his ears and his heart pounding. It was 1965. That was the only part of his sob story worth sharing.

The water had run cold and Wade had lost track of time. His hand was no longer bleeding and the skin on his scarred hands had begun to wrinkle. He wondered why his body did that. Peter would know. Peter. Shit.

Wade climbed out of the shower and dressed, attempting to clear up the mess he had made in the bathroom. He entered the main room and looked around. The T.V. was still on but Peter was nowhere to be seen. In the kitchen, his weapons were strewn across the floor and his duffle bag was missing.

“Kid?” Wade called out in confusion.

“Look, I know I fucked up- a lot. It’s kind of my thing but I promise if you give me another chance I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” A voice in Wade’s head chides.

He had learnt to ignore them. They were like kids chucking tantrums. If you taught them screaming wouldn’t get them anywhere they wouldn’t try it when he was having a good day. Some days he didn’t hear them at all.

“The silent treatment? What are we five?” The apartment was silent.

“I mean I know I am but I thought you had that whole, _wise beyond your ‘years’_ thing going for you.” Silence.

“Petey?”

Wade ran to his bedroom, his heart pounding unnaturally fast in his chest. It was empty. Peter’s clothes were gone.

“Peter?” Wade called out one last time, this time knowing he was gone.

Wade had this little coping mechanism called ‘ _breaking stuff’_. The _‘stuff’_ in this case included his wrist, his bedroom door and his own fucking heart.

***

The average heart rate for an adult settled somewhere around 60-100 beats-per-minute. Peter’s was doing double for the half-hour taxi ride from Hell’s Kitchen, New York to Forest Hill, Queens. His body was not in equilibrium. He didn’t have time to think about it.

Peter’s heart sank upon arriving outside of the home he had grown up in. The first of many things that tipped him off that something was wrong was the door. The door, which his Aunt May locked even when walking to her front gate to check the mail, was now left ajar. The second was that the window to his Uncle Ben’s office was open. May had shut the place off after Ben’s death and to his knowledge, it hadn’t been opened since.

The taxi driver offered to stay and wait for Peter but he waved the man off, telling him to leave. He didn’t know what he would find waiting for him or how long he would take. He shoved the hand-held radio he had used to listen to different news stations and police scanners back into Wade’s duffle bag and climbed out of the taxi.

The pathway which led from the street to the front door of Peter’s old house had never felt as long as it did at that moment. It felt like he could have crossed continents in the time it took him to get to the front door.

Peter kicked the door open, hearing it smack into the wall and crack the plywood. Yuri once told him that the reason the police so often kicked in doors despite them being open was in case someone was waiting to ambush them from behind it. In theory, this was logical but in practice with no one currently behind the door and the loud crack still bouncing around Peter skull he couldn’t help but feel as though he had given up his position.

Nothing was out of place. All the photos that lined the walls of the entryway were perfectly straight as always. Aunt May’s ceramic bowls and china plates were still precariously balanced in a glass cabinet suspended above the kitchen sink. There was a record still in the player, the needle still down. It was then Peter heard the thud of boots on the stairs.  

Peter turned to see the body of a man sauntering down from upstairs. He saw the man in parts. First, he saw the man’s boots near-white but scuffed and stained brown then his body. There was nothing miraculous about him he was of average height and a build that suggested he was both strong and athletic but not in an astounding way. There were so many other men that looked like him and yet there was something imposing about him. Maybe it was the way he moved. Peter didn’t know how to describe it. Every move felt precise and calculated without being robotic. The man didn’t even acknowledge Peter until he reached the bottom of the steps. The other man’s mannerisms eerily mirrored his own.

“I was wondering what was taking you so long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I tried to include a bit of Wade's point of view within this chapter. The story is going to remain Peter centred but I thought when necessary it might be interesting to throw in a bit of Wade's point of view. I tried to create a distinctly different voice for him, guess it's up to you guys to decide how well it worked. Anywho, tell me how you feel about it in the comments if you feel like it.


	9. The Mirror Man

“Where’s May?” Peter’s voice was curt and commanding.

This voice smothered the terrifying child screaming within him. He was playing the role of someone cool and confident, flippant and unbothered. The man was an unspeaking mirror superimposed on the scene of Peter’s childhood home. He leaned against the bannister of the steps looking equal parts bored and alert.

This was the house Peter had grown up in. When Peter was young his Uncle Ben would place the small boy on his shoulders and run around the house. Peter would pretend to be a fighter pilot and Ben would be the plane. May would shake her head as they knocked over furniture and trudged mud or snow on the cream coloured carpet. Many of the stains remained to this day. He had his first kiss in the backyard of this house over the fence that divided his and Mary-Jane’s house. This was his home even still, years after moving out, the place felt warm. The stranger didn’t belong. Everything about him being there was wrong.

“May, where is she?” Peter repeated his voice staying stern.

“Who?” The man finally replied sounding cold.

Peter squared his jaw, his brows drawing together in frustration. He could hear Mary-Jane scolding him in the back of his mind. _Don’t do the face tiger. You’ll give yourself wrinkles._ Being here made him feel closer to her, closer to a life he had left behind several years ago.

“The woman who lives here. About this tall, grey hair.”

“Can’t say that rings a bell. Trust me if it did I’d be using her against you by now but you are just the man I wanted to see. I was hoping you’d come around and here you are,” Peter’s blood ran cold.

“Who are you?”

“Haven’t you guessed by now Peter? I thought you were meant to be a smart boy.”

“Tony Masters?” The man smirked.

“Let’s give the kid a prize,” Peter took a step backwards as Masters took a step forward.

Wade’s duffle bag slipped further down Peter’s good shoulder. Something about the movement set a fire behind Masters’ eyes. His gaze looked hungry, gorging itself on every micro-movement Peter made. He was a wild animal, an apex predator who had spotted a weak link in the herd. He had spotted Peter’s weakness.

The man moved quicker than Peter’s eyes could track his body striking forward like a viper. His thumb dug deep into Peter’s bullet wound causing him to let out a shocked gasp of pain. Peter’s hand balled into a fist, swinging out to defend himself. Masters caught the blow and bent Peter’s arm at an awkward angle causing him to double over as pain rippled through him. He dropped the duffle bag in the scuffle.

“Pathetic, really. I thought Wade would have taught you something.”

Peter threw his head back knocking it into Masters’ jaw catching him off guard. He had an opening and used it to elbow the man in the stomach. He then spun around and landed a solid kick to the man’s groin. Twenty points.

Masters doubled over himself his shoulders trembling. Peter thought he was trying to catch his breath but then he heard a rough laugh escape the man’s lips. Masters shot forward, spinning Peter around and grabbing his arm, locking it in place. He threw the boy tumbling over his shoulder as if he were nothing more than a backpack. Masters kept a tight grip on his arm. Peter felt the muscles and tendons in his shoulder scream. His ball and socket joint was a yoyo stretching and spinning out of place. Peter’s legs barely reached the ground before the older man roughly tugged his arm upwards. Tony Masters was a child swinging around a ragdoll.

Peter was now behind him. Masters jerked his head back crashing into Peter’s jaw. His moves mirrored Peter’s. No. Mirroring wasn’t the right word. He improved upon them. Where Peter was sloppy he was precise, calculated. Something about it reminded Peter vaguely of how he had seen Wade fight.

Masters elbow hit each tender spot of Peter’s body with marksmen-like precision. The kick to his groin made Peter sure kids were no longer in his future because holy hell that hurt. He doubled over gasping for air. Masters was a frantic bull while Peter was a red cape. The man lurched forward the full force of his body contacting with Peter’s and sending him plummeting backwards. His head smacked against the ground so hard it made his teeth chatter.

“Wade taught you how to fight dirty,” He observed.

“But sloppy.”

One of Peter’s teeth had firmly embedded itself into his bottom lip. Blood filled his mouth and trickled down his jaw. Masters had his body pinned. His arms were splayed above his head as if he were a frog about to be vivisected. Peter squirmed frantically feeling his heartbeat buzz like that of a hummingbird. He spat the blood into the other man’s face.

“I taught myself how to fight dirty.” Peter was still playing the role of someone far braver than himself.

Masters shifted his weight, digging his knee into Peter’s spleen. He looked bored. He didn’t bother wiping his face. The specks of blood and spit made his demeanour unnerving.

“You’re pathetic, predictable and not worth my time.”

“Hey, have you been reading my old report cards? I think Mrs Jenkins said the same thing to me in the fourth grade.” Masters’ knee dug deeper.

There were several unnerving cracks in quick succession, as though a child had just jumped into a pile of twigs. Breathing became a labour and spots begun to cloud Peter’s vision. When clarity found Peter, he realised Masters had adjusted his position, moving to grab Wade’s duffle bag which had fallen just out of their reach. Masters haphazardly rummaged around in the bag, Peter’s clothes spewing out across the floor. He was looking for the files.

“You didn’t bring them. Shame. I’m not surprised but I wasn’t in the mood for torture. I find fighting much more interesting. Then again you and Wade have the same mouth so it might be fun after all.” 

“This isn’t going to work,” Peter assured.

“I don’t mean as much to Wade as you think I do, hurting me isn’t going to get you anywhere.” Peter was unsure of his own words. He couldn’t call it bluffing because he honestly didn’t know. Wade’s mind was an enigma Peter hadn’t yet cracked. Maybe he cared, maybe he didn’t.

“Agree to disagree,” Masters breathed, giving up searching through the bag and turning his attention back to Peter.

“Wade has a hero complex which is good for me. Heroes are easy to manipulate,” He continued.

Peter let out a small groan trying to ignore the unnatural way his shoulder now fell. If only he could get to the bag. Wade’s gun was still shoved in the side pocket. Despite being against lethal weapons, Peter only had so many options. It was a last resort but he had the unnerving feeling he was about to be in a worst-case kind of scenario.

“Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to sit through this monologue, just knock me out. This is too much like an Alfred Hitchcock film,” Peter choked, trying to edge his way towards the bag.  

“You see the thing about heroes-”

“-You’re really not going to stop,” Peter scoffed.

The bag was close enough to grab now but he needed to get a hand free.

“Is that they have their weaknesses.”

“I get it. It’s Achilles and his heel but the thing is, I’m not Wade’s weakness. I’m not his anything.”

“And here I was thinking you were smart.”

Peter struggled, trying to get free. Masters’ applied more weight to his body. From the duffle bag, the crackling sound of static erupted. Peter had forgotten to turn off the radio. The voice muffled by the duffle bag cause Masters to ease up.

“Kid? Peter? You there? You probably can’t hear this but if you can, just let me know you’re safe. Fuck that sounds cheesy. Forget I said anything I just- I know I said you could leave whenever you wanted and if I were you I would have left too but it’s dangerous out there. Fuck now it sounds like I’m lecturing you. You know it’s dangerous but just…”

Peter heard Wade groan in frustration. Shit. In his haste to make sure May was okay he had just left Wade’s apartment. He could have written a note, something. He hadn’t been thinking.

Masters released Peter’s hand and reached over to get the radio from the duffle bag. Peter had a small window of opportunity. He needed to get the gun. He inched his hand closer to the bag, tugging on the fabric as Masters turned back to face him.

“I’m afraid Peter doesn’t want to talk to you right now but I can take a message.”

Wade’s voice fell silent at the other end of the two-way radio. Static took over the airwaves for several long seconds.  

“How do I know you’re not lying?” Wade’s voice sounded cold and sharp.

“I’ve heard your boy considers himself a bit of an artist.” Had everyone gone digging into Peter’s private life?

Masters tugged Peter’s hand from the duffle bag, examining it for a moment before yanking a finger backwards. The sickening crack of his bone was followed by a burst of momentary agony. Peter tried to muffle his scream against his shoulder. What sound escaped his lips was strained and choked. It was a mixture of gagging and shrieking.

“What the fuck did you do?” There was no hint of the joking jovialness that normally coloured Wade’s tone.

“What did I do Peter?” There was the ghost of amusement in the man’s tone.

Masters placed the radio down beside Peter’s head and let both of Peter’s hands free, shifting down to straddle his aching ribs applying an uncomfortable amount of pressure. He needed Peter to prove it was him. Peter didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction, instead opting to spit in his face again. Masters grabbed a tuft of his hair, smacking his head against the floor.

“Talk to me kid. Where are you?”

There was something restrained about Wade’s tone. He was holding back, for a reason Peter couldn't decipher. He was suffocating his usual reactive self. His voice felt too impersonal and clinical. That wasn’t Wade.

Peter grabbed the radio, trying to avoid irritating his broken finger which was beginning to swell and turn purple.

“Old house. May’s.” Peter found his voice failing him. He fought to keep the cracks in his façade from showing.

“Requesting a status report soldier,” Some of Wade’s cavalier came through. Peter felt the ghost of a smile creep onto his face. It was then Peter caught on that Wade was also playing a part. He was trying to distance himself from Peter.

“Broken finger, I think. Probably some cracked ribs. Hard to breathe. Maybe hurt my jaw. Definitely screwed up my shoulder.”

Peter tried to keep emotion from touching his voice. Instead, he listed off his gruesome injuries, in the same manner, one might read out their grocery list. His anatomy betrayed him as his swollen jaw muffled his words and his broken ribs turned his breathing ragged.

“I’m going to have to look through the stuff I have on you to find the address… Okay?”

What a time for Wade to grow a conscience. Peter could hear the shuffle of feet and the slamming of doors as Wade spoke.

Masters was looking increasingly bored. He snatched the radio from Peter in the process grabbing another finger and bending it slightly, testing how far it would bend before inevitably snapping.

“Okay- shit, okay.” Peter let fear creep into his voice with the anticipation of pain.

“Bring the files with you Wilson or he dies before you get here. You know the spiel. You give me _my_ files. I give you the kid.”

“Your files? The ones _you_ stole? I don’t think that makes them yours. And I’m not a fan of takesies backsies,” Wade noted. Masters applied more pressure to Peter’s finger.

“Enough with the bullshit Wilson.”

He jerked Peter’s finger back in one fluid motion. It took Peter off guard, a sob tumbling from his lips. His body writhed involuntarily, his injuries screaming.  

“Petey?” Wade’s voice was very small.

All sound left Peter. The pain became all-encompassing. His ears rang. His body twitched. He buried his face into the cream coloured carpet now stained red with blood. The world faded away for a second before Wade’s voice brought him back.

“Peter?”

Peter let out a soft groan in response.

“Peter, you okay?” Peter let out a weak groan.

“M’Fine,” He breathed through gritted teeth not wanting to give Masters the satisfaction.

“How did you get to May’s house?”

There was an odd tapping from the other end of the radio as though Wade were nervously drumming his fingers. It seemed oddly rhythmic. It was a mix of quiet and loud taps. Dots and dashes. Morse code. Peter wished he paid more attention when Wade had tried to teach it to him as they sat on the floor of the safe house sketching.

“Taxi.” Peter’s voice sounded warbled within his ears, off. The same rhythmic tap thudded like a heartbeat. Peter tried to mentally plot the long and short of the encoded message.

“Taxi? Round back?”

Peter hummed softly, nodding his head without realising Wade couldn’t see it.

**It’s O.K.** That was the code.

Peter could have laughed. He could have cried.

He felt both comforted and irritated. Wade could think to tap out a secret code to Peter but didn’t give him anything helpful. There was no useful information, no plan to get out of there, no explanation as to why he was acting so strangely.

Masters interrupted their conversation, pushing Wade again to bring the files. All the while Peter racked his brain, poorly tapping out a faint code. One broken finger tapping was a dot, two a dash. Pain shot through Peter’s hand but he continued. He hoped it was loud enough for Wade to hear under Masters’ blathering. He was sure he slipped up several times, unsure if Wade would be able to understand.

**Distraction**

Peter needed a distraction. He wished there was a way to clarify this but with his limited knowledge of Morse code, the time it took to tap out even one word and the two broken fingers it seemed impossible to get across a clear message.

“Enough talk, Wilson do we have a deal or do I have to start actually trying to hurt the kid?”  Masters growled through gritted teeth trying to remain calm and restrained. The cracks in his façade were also beginning to show.

Peter had the feeling it wasn’t often his job to do the ground level dirty work. From what Peter had seen and from what Wade had told him, he had most of New York City under his thumb. It was possible he had hundreds of men in plain sight. He didn’t need to be the one doing this, which meant whatever was going on between him and Wade was also personal.

“Someone’s getting antsy Tony. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I got you into trouble with the big man,” Wade’s sounded sure of himself. Peter hoped this wasn’t an act. He hoped that for once in his life, Wade Wilson knew what he was doing.  

“You know Wade, I’ve dealt with cockroaches that are easier to kill than you but if I don’t have the files in my hand today the higher-ups are going to send in the big guns.” Masters made it sound less like a threat and more like a fact.  

“Oh, I’m shaking. It’s been so long since I had a good run-in with Lonnie. Think it was back in 61’. Do you even remember 61’ or are your eggs just as scrambled as mine?” Wade seemed to aggravate Masters more with this comment. He dug his knee deeper into Peter’s body.

“You’re even more insane than I remember.”                                          

“That’s my shtick, plus Do you know how much money I could get if I sold those files?” Wade posed the question but didn’t pause enough to let Masters answer.

“We’re talking six figures. I could sell them to the papers or to Russia, fuck I could sell it back to the government and they’ll probably let me name a fucking price. You think some piece of ass is worth that? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good piece of ass but it’s not six figures good. I could move to some place nice for life, I’m thinking Hawaii.”

Masters look down at Peter as though mildly surprised his plan wasn’t working. There was still that deep look of quiet contemplation behind his eyes as if he was trying to find a loose thread in his plan.

“Plus, I get to piss off you and whoever you’re working for, things are all working out for me buddy-old-pal,” Wade pushed, his voice taking on a sing-song manner as he taunted.

Masters loses all pretence of cool calculation. It melts away within an instant and he becomes a white-hot flame of anger. He moves quicker than Peter’s eyes can follow. The weight on Peter’s body has disappeared. Wade’s duffle bag is around Masters broad shoulders and in his right hand was Wade’s gun now pointed directly at Peter.

It was in this moment Peter’s mind became a black hole devoid of time and sound. He had two options. He could lay down and die or go down fighting. His body didn’t let his mind choose, it reacted lurching forward and toppling into Masters.

What happened next was a flailing of limbs and a breaking of bones. It was a loss of sound and a loss of time. Peter was on the ground, a bullet embedded into the floor two inches from his left ear making the whole world ring like a bell. Masters aimed the gun again, this time at Peter’s head. It was then that the room shook.

The wall to what had previously been the front of the house was now a gaping hole, patched partially by the headlights of a taxi. Masters was shocked enough to give Peter a window of opportunity. He snatched the gun from the man. Holding his breath, Peter aimed the gun at Masters’ shoulder his heart pounding in his ringing ears, his body screaming and trembling. With shaking, broken fingers he pulled the trigger.

Masters riled back his face contorting in pain and confusion. He stumbled off Peter as the taxi driver from Wade’s safe house climbed out of the cab wielding a crowbar. He tossed it haphazardly missing Masters by several feet.

“Come on,” The driver called running over and pulling Peter into the taxi, Masters hot on their heels.

The taxi driver snatched the gun from Peter. He quickly wound down the driver’s window, leaning out to shoot the gun wildly as he reversed out of the house with his free hand. He managed to shoot Masters once in the kneecap, giving them just enough time to get away. All the while he screamed and laughed like a madman. He enjoyed his job a little too much.

Once they were back on the road the driver floored it. The cab lurched forward and weaved through the traffic, shooting down the wrong directions of one-way streets and jumping curbs.

“Did you see his face?” The man laughed, turning to Peter his eyes widening comically as if to mirror Masters’ face.

Peter was too pumped full of adrenaline to take anything in. He was unsure what had just happened but the realisation of how close to death he had been begun to sink in. He shot a man. The man had tortured Peter and was likely still after him but that was no excuse. Peter could have killed him. He didn’t want to kill anyone, even Masters but at that moment, he would have done anything to live. He had stared his own fears and mortality in the face and now cringed to know how dark he could become if pushed.

“Dopinder? You got Peter?” The radio sputtered to life and spoke with Wade’s voice.

The taxi driver grabbed the handheld speaker attached to the radio and spoke into it.

“Mr Wilson. I shot an assassin and saved your friend. I’ve never felt so alive,” There was a euphoria to his tone Peter had only heard from children on birthdays or Christmases.

“Great job Brown Panther but can you put Petey on the line for me?”

The taxi driver, Dopinder offered Peter the speaker before looking at his butchered hand and sagging shoulder. Now that Peter had begun to calm down his body throbbed all over, the skin around his muscles felt tight.

“He’s looking a little worse for wear right now sir,” On the other end of the line Wade sighed.

“Peter, can you hear me?” That was a good question. One of Peter’s ears still rang. The shrill humming of crickets made it hard to focus. He shut his eyes and opened his mouth to reply.

“I hear you,” It came out as little more than a whisper. Peter wasn’t sure Wade heard him at all.

“Dopinder, I’ll scope out Peter’s old place. If Masters is still there I’m going to hack him into tiny pieces and feed them to the New York sewer ‘gators. Meet you at the Brooklyn X. Make sure you aren’t followed. Ask for Steve-”

Wade kept talking but the ringing in Peter’s ear became louder, harder to bear. He shut his eyes and rested his head against the cold glass of the passenger side window feeling every curve of the street and shutter of the car. After all he had been through that day his Aunt May was still missing, Peter was a criminal and Masters still wanted to kill him, now more than ever. Peter’s mind spun and worried away at itself, finding new problems without new solutions until his body, broken and exhausted shut down and a dreamless sleep overcame him.


End file.
